Deferred tax assets arise from temporary differences between the measurement of assets and liabilities for financial reporting purposes and their measurement for tax purposes. There are also tax losses carried forward.

The temporary differences concerned the tax treatment of the purchase price paid by the Dutch State, the differences in respect of the measurement of tangible fixed assets and other temporary differences. The first difference arose when Gasunie was split into a transport and a trading company in 2005. At the time, the Dutch State made a deemed capital contribution to Gasunie for tax purposes. Gasunie did not capitalise this purchase price for tax purposes under IFRS. This recognition of the purchase price has given Gasunie an additional tax depreciation potential, for which a deferred tax asset has been recognised.

The temporary difference resulting from the measurement of tangible fixed assets is mainly due to the one-time remeasurement of tangible fixed assets to the deemed costs during the transition to IFRS after Gasunie was split into two companies in 2005. In addition, the depreciation method for tax purposes deviates from time to time from the depreciation principles under IFRS (including the recognition of impairments and their reversals). We recognise temporary differences for that in the balance sheet. On balance, temporary differences in tangible fixed assets result in a deferred tax liability.

The other differences relate to temporary differences resulting from employee benefits.

The aforementioned deferred tax assets and liabilities relate to the fiscal unity for Dutch corporate income tax and satisfy the conditions for setting off tax items. We have therefore presented deferred taxation as a net amount.

The tax losses carried forward arose in 2024 and relate solely to the tax loss for the 2024 financial year. There are no recognised and/or unrecognised tax losses carried forward from previous years. Based on the 2025-2027 business plan, we expect that, during the business plan period, we can make full use of the available tax losses carried forward.

At year-end 2024, we expected sufficient future taxable profits to utilise the deferred tax assets (year-end 2023: the same). This assumption is based on the projected taxable results for the coming years (based on the 2025-2027 business plan) and on the assumption that, based on the current regulatory frameworks, we will in principle always be allowed to make a reasonable return on our invested amounts and recover the operating expenses and depreciation costs, meaning that we will also earn sufficient taxable profits in the long term.

The deferred tax assets (including the tax losses carried forward) at year-end 2024 to be settled within one year from the balance sheet date amounted to € 35.0 million (year-end 2023: € 33.5 million). This amount is not shown separately under current assets. The non-current portion of the deferred tax assets has a term until 2070.