Works compensation for victims of the tax and customs administration blacklist

Work is underway to compensate people blacklisted by the tax authorities and who have suffered financially as a result. In a letter to the House of Representatives, Secretary of State Filibriev made a number of proposals for the intended regulation.

The total number of people who are eligible for compensation is still being investigated by the PwC consulting firm. It also looks at the amount of financial harm people have suffered in order to determine the amount of compensation.

It is already known that tax authorities may have erroneously rejected applications for debt restructuring from 5,000 to 15,000 people because the applicants were on the blacklist, the so-called fraud signaling facility.

Filbrev considers the unjustified refusal to restructure the debt dangerous: “It was not possible to help the people who were in big financial problems as a result and may have ended up in even bigger (financial) problems. So I think the starting point should be that everyone is compensated who was harmed.”

‘serious violation’

Blacklists confirmed by RTL News employment devotion highlighted. The fraud flags facility was taken down last year after the list was found to be in violation of the GDPR privacy law. The Dutch data protection authority published a damning report on the fraud list in October and is still investigating whether the tax authorities can be fined.

“The invasion of privacy is a serious one that I don’t want to easily ignore,” Filbrev wrote. But he wonders if public compensation is the answer, because otherwise the real scammers will also get compensation. Also, not everyone will be financially deprived of being blacklisted.

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What the compensation will look like depends not only on the number and amount of people entitled to the benefit, but also on whether the allocation is possible and who will pay this allowance. In the latter case, it is examined whether an organization other than the Tax and Customs Administration can implement compensation schemes.

Final proposals are expected in the first quarter of next year, after which the House of Representatives can also participate in the final implementation of the compensation plans.