While the searches of Netflix's Paris premises ordered by the French legal system resumed on Wednesday, November 6, those conducted at the streaming giant's European headquarters in Amsterdam had come to an end. On the morning of November 5, Netflix International BV was also paid a visit by the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service, an agency of the Dutch Finance Ministry, in liaison with Eurojust, the European judicial cooperation unit. An investigation by the French National Financial Prosecutor [PNF] has been underway in France since November 2022, said Dutch prosecutors.

They made no further comment, explaining that "this is a French investigation." The PNF's preliminary investigation into Netflix France in 2022 concerned possible aggravated tax fraud laundering and off-the-books work by an organized group. The company had already been the target of a tax audit for the fiscal years 2019, 2020 and 2021.

When contacted on Tuesday, Netflix management in Amsterdam would not comment. In January, an investigation by the Dutch daily NRC detailed the complex structures set up by the company to evade tax. Netflix had retorted that it complied with all tax rules in force in the countries where it operated, and significantly contributed to employment in the Dutch cultural sector.

The headquarters, set up in the Netherlands in 2015, employs some 500 people of various nationalities – including French nationals – who manage the company's Europe, Africa and Middle East region activities, and almost half of the streaming company's global subscriptions. Worldwide, Netflix had 277 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2024.

'License fees'

According to an investigation conducted by the British NGO TaxWatch in 2018, the American company had sales of €5.5 billion that year and paid just €4 million in taxes in the Netherlands. The tax system in force in the Dutch kingdom allows foreign companies, including American ones, to avoid double taxation and transfer money to other subsidiaries, thereby reducing their declared profit and therefore their taxes. Netflix's domestic subsidiaries use this system to transfer "license fees" to Netflix International BV, which in turn sends them to the United States. The latest annual report published in Amsterdam indicated that in 2023 the company generated revenue of €15.8 billion, of which €13.6 billion was sent to other group headquarters.

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