Accountants and law firms have their hands full with the decisions of the phosphate rights, which dairy farmers have received in recent weeks from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl).
Accountants and law firms say things are going through a storm. They say they have a lot of work to do the phosphate rights and also to the completion of the phosphate reduction plan.
A lot of work for accountants
"New regulations generally create extra work," says Lambert Schuldink, dairy farming business advisor at countus† "That work consists of assessing the decisions. We expect many objections about the allocation of the phosphate rights. Those objections must be made within 6 weeks."
Closing transactions also takes extra work. This is mainly done by forming partnerships for the transfer. Careful consideration must be given to the tax consequences for both parties. "It is important to aim for the highest net price and not the highest gross price," says Schuldink.
He does expect that the amount of extra work can be filled in with his own staff. Schuldink: "We do not want and cannot just hire new employees for this. The problem is too specific for that."
Many objections
Erik van Gorp is an agricultural business advisor at ABAB Agro Advies and also has a lot of work on the procedures surrounding the phosphate reduction plan. The advisers and lawyers are busy drawing up objections and damage analyses. He also indicates that there are many objection procedures against the allocation of phosphate rights.
Van Gorp estimates that there will be dozens of objections in response to the procedures under the phosphate rights system. However, additional staff is not necessary. Van Gorp: "For the time being, we are not specifically working on this. We first want to solve it with our own people. However, I am not ruling out extra staff this year."
Law firms get a lot of work
Law firms also have a lot of work to do on the phosphate rights and the phosphate reduction plan. Mary Toders van Linssen CS Advocaten: "There will be a lot of extra work. For example, the phosphate rights decisions have been announced in recent weeks and many dairy farmers want to lodge an objection."
As a result of the ruling of 31 October (in which the phosphate reduction scheme was maintained), the dairy farms that had passed the light test in the first instance, also have retroactive effect receive fines† These decisions are also subject to legal challenge. Toonders: "It will be submitted to the court at an individual level through a substantive procedure that the elaboration of the phosphate reduction scheme, or the phosphate rights system, will lead to a disproportionate burden."
© DCA Market Intelligence. This market information is subject to copyright. It is not permitted to reproduce, distribute, disseminate or make the content available to third parties for compensation, in any form, without the express written permission of DCA Market Intelligence.
