Why Getting Rich in Europe Keeps Getting Harder
The Netherlands just passed a 36% tax on unrealized gains, and the rest of the continent isn't far behind.
On February 12, 2026, the Dutch House of Representatives approved a bill that slices through the illusions of effortless wealth building like a tax auditor’s red pen. The Wet werkelijk rendement box 3, or Actual Return in Box 3 Act, imposes a flat 36 percent levy on the yearly unrealized appreciation of liquid assets such as stocks and cryptocurrencies. Hold onto rising shares, and the state claims its cut before a single euro changes hands.
The roots of this pivot trace back to a system that taxed savings on phantom yields, assuming every euro in the bank churned out four to five and a half percent annually, even as post-2008 interest rates flatlined near zero. Savers paid up on fictional profits, sometimes handing over more than they actually earned, until the Supreme Court’s Christmas Judgment in 2021 struck it down as a breach of property rights under the European Convention.
The court demanded taxation on real returns. Fair enough.
Yet the 2026 legislation twists that mandate into something sharper. Public equities and digital coins fall under the Capital Growth Regime, where year-end valuations dictate the bill. A portfolio climbing from 100,000 euros to 120,000 triggers a 7,200 euro payment, liquidity demanded from gains that may vanish by morning.
Illiquid assets, real estate beyond the family home, stakes in startups, escape until sold.
That split warps incentives in exactly the direction nobody needed. Money flows into overpriced bricks or shadowy private ventures, away from the stock market’s broad, accessible ladders that ordinary people actually climb. The Dutch housing crunch deepens not as a bug but as a feature of the design, with investors piling into property for tax shelter rather than yield.
The tax-free threshold shrinks to about 1,800 euros in annual income. A modest 50,000 euro nest egg at eight percent growth blows past that instantly. The drag hits before the compounding curve even curves.
Crypto amplifies the peril.
Picture an investor riding Bitcoin from 30,000 euros to 80,000 in a boom year. That 50,000 euro jump means 18,000 euros due in cash, forcing a partial sell-off if reserves run dry. Then the bust arrives, value halving back to 30,000, yielding a paper loss to carry forward. But the cash is gone. Already funneled to the treasury on a mirage that evaporated. In the United States, no such trap springs without a sale, letting holders weather the crash with their position intact.
This Dutch overhaul is not an isolated fever. Ireland’s deemed disposal rule targets the very ETFs that democratized indexing for retail investors. Every eight years from purchase, holders of UCITS funds must treat the asset as sold, remitting 41 percent on the accrued gain. That rate dwarfs the 33 percent on direct stock sales. Losses stay siloed, unusable against wins in other funds. A tech ETF tanks 10,000 euros while pharma surges the same? Pharma gets taxed full bore. No netting allowed.
Over four decades, that resets the clock five times.
Norway’s net wealth tax layers on another toll: roughly one percent annually on fortunes above a threshold, indifferent to whether the portfolio gained or lost. The underlying logic is the same everywhere. Unchecked private wealth is not treated as economic health. It is treated as a problem to be periodically corrected.
The middle class feels this most acutely. Entry-level portfolios trigger immediate friction. Scaling up invites escalating penalties. The viral frustration that Europe rigs the game against getting rich lands with real mathematical bite; the path steepens not through market forces but through engineered headwinds. Investors adapt by derisking, favoring bonds or homes, or by expatriating capital to friendlier shores, a luxury beyond most.
The broader implication lingers. Europe’s attrition model risks a slow drain of both talent and capital, ceding innovation’s spoils to jurisdictions that reward patience rather than punish it. The choice sharpens between systems that fortify preservation and those that pave toward abundance, leaving Europe’s middle tiers to navigate a landscape tilted ever further toward the plod over the leap.
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Dutch Lawmakers Approve a 36% Tax on Unrealized Crypto, Stock, and Bond Gains