“Meten is weten.” (Measuring is knowing)
– Dutch proverb
Taxing Phantoms
If you want to see the future of socialism and its rabid appetite to consume your life savings, you don’t have to look at the history books. Instead, look at the Netherlands.
On February 12, 2026, the Dutch House of Representatives passed the Actual Return in Box 3 Act (Wet werkelijk rendement box 3). On the surface, it’s promoted as a fairness correction to a system the Dutch Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 2021. In reality, it is a financial suicide note that turns every investor into a tenant of the state.
Instead of returning to sanity following the Supreme Court ruling, the Hague doubled down. This new bill is the supposed correction. But it replaces the prior tax on assumed return with a rapacious system that treats your portfolio’s fluctuating value as a liquid ATM for the state.
This legislative overreach ignores the fundamental principle of private property, effectively penalizing success before it is even realized. It also signals a predatory shift where the fruits of your labor and risk-taking are no longer your own, but rather a communal pool for bureaucratic redistribution.
Starting January 1, 2028, the Dutch government plans to tax residents at a flat rate of 36 percent on the actual returns of their savings and investments. But here’s the kicker: actual returns don’t just mean the money you actually put in your pocket. They include unrealized capital gains. These are the annual increase in the value of your stocks, bonds, and bitcoin, even if you haven’t sold a single dime.
You are forced to pay taxes with cash you might not have on profits that could vanish in a market crash the following morning. It is another heist of the middle classes’ future.
Moving the Goalposts
There’s a classic bit of lore famously referenced in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country about the origin of the word sabotage. Spock notes that disgruntled Dutch workers would throw their traditional wooden shoes, called sabots, into the gears of the automated looms to break the machinery. Thus, sabots became sabotage.
The Dutch government is currently taking its own sabot and hurling it directly into the gears of its economy. By taxing money that doesn’t exist yet (paper gains), they are ensuring that the machinery of private wealth accumulation grinds to a halt.
If your portfolio goes up by €100,000, you owe €36,000 in cash by tax day. If you don’t have that cash sitting in a low-yield savings account, you are forced to sell to pay up.
If you’re in the USA and thinking, “Glad it’s them and not us,” think again. During the 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris made no secret of her support for similar billionaire minimum taxes. Her proposal targeted individuals with over $100 million in wealth, suggesting a 25 percent tax on unrealized gains.
While the billionaire label makes it a popular ‘tax the rich’ talking point for the Democrat base, the Dutch example shows us where the goalposts eventually move. What starts as a tax on the ultra-wealthy is soon applied to the middle class once the government realizes that the $100 million club doesn’t buy as many votes (or pay as many debts) as it used to.
The logic is identical. That the state has a right to a piece of your success before you’ve even realized it. It’s a transition from taxing income to taxing existence.
Stealth Wealth Registry
The most sinister aspect of this isn’t even the 36 percent rate. It’s the administrative surveillance required to enforce it. To tax an unrealized gain, the government must first know the value of everything you own.
This isn’t just about your Charles Schwab account. To fulfill the requirements of the Actual Return in Box 3 Act, the state busybodies have to look at everything you own that could appreciate. The pre-1965 jar of junk silver coins. Your kid’s Squishmallows. The gold necklace that was inherited from your great grandmother.
Under the law, these must be valued and reported so they can be taxed. If you fail to report them, you will face tax evasion charges. That’s when everything that’s yours becomes theirs.
When the state demands an annual accounting of your wealth to calculate a paper gain, it is establishing a de facto wealth registry. Once the government goons have the list, the leap from taxing the gain to forfeiting the asset is a very short one.
If you fail to report a bottlecap that suddenly becomes a collector’s item, you aren’t just a hobbyist. You’re a criminal.
With respect to financial markets, the Actual Return in Box 3 Act will cause absolute chaos. If everyone is forced to sell 3 to 5 percent of their holdings every year just to pay the tax on the rest of their holdings, you create a permanent, artificial sell pressure.
And what happens when the market crashes? The Dutch bill suggests you can carry forward losses. But that doesn’t put cash back in your pocket when you need to pay the mortgage today. It is a one-way street where the government confiscates your wins but merely notes your losses for the future.
The Dutch Blueprint for the Global Middle Class Heist
Once again, this is all part of the “you will own nothing” plan that is playing out in real-time. By taxing the potential of wealth rather than the result of it, the state ensures that private capital can never reach the escape velocity needed to remain independent of the government.
The Dutch are throwing the sabot into the economic machine. We here in the USA should be watching very closely. The socialists, like Gavin Newsom and AOC, who want to run the American economic machine are holding their own wooden shoes, waiting for their turn.
This is the great confiscation disguised as a spreadsheet correction. When the state begins taxing the potential of an asset rather than its realized value, it effectively converts all private property into a government lease.
You no longer truly own your stocks, your gold, or your home. You merely manage them for a silent partner who demands a dividend in cash every year, regardless of whether you’ve made a cent. It’s the ultimate sabotage of the middle class.
The logic of Box 3, and its blueprint for similar laws in America and elsewhere, relies on the hope that you won’t notice the transition until the trap is sprung. By the time the average family realizes their retirement account and all their private assets are being cannibalized to fund a bureaucratic deficit, the wealth registry will be absolute.
The ability to accumulate capital for independent growth will be degraded into a criminal system of state-managed dependency. Once the taxman moves his grubby hands from our income to our existence, we’re no longer just paying a fee. We’re surrendering the very concept of a future.
[Editor’s note: Get a free copy of an important special report called, “Cash Machine – Why You Should Own this Mineral Royalty with a 12% Yield,” when you join the Economic Prism mailing list today. If you want a special trial deal to check out MN Gordon’s Wealth Prism Letter, you can grab that here.]
Sincerely,
MN Gordon
for Economic Prism
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