Dealing with the tax authorities is a necessary chore of adulthood. Especially as an expat in the Netherlands, it can prove a complicated task to navigate through the complex Dutch taxing system.
What is even more complicated is if you have dual citizenship in the Netherlands, as research has shown that the tax authorities will have even stricter controls than usual, reports NU.
Stricter checks between 2012 and 2014
The research has shown that between 2012 and 2014, those who had second citizenship were checked more strictly for fraud by the tax authorities.
The Tax and Customs Administration developed a “risk module” which had five criteria that if fulfilled would have lead to a more intensive check on tax returns. Among these criteria was that of having a second nationality.
In 2012, 3,403 citizens were additionally checked based on the criteria, followed by 7,466 people in the year after. In 2014, the law was amended, and dual citizenship was no longer registered in the Personal Records Database. By 2015, dual citizenship was no longer used by tax authorities as a reason for stricter checks.
Controversial allowance affair
In 2019 it was revealed that the tax department unlawfully terminated child allowances and designated certain parents as fraudsters without any proof. This involved thousands of euros, causing financial trouble for innocent parents.
The tax department denied any sort of ethnic profiling, but it’s important to note that the older data on dual citizenship was available to the allowance department for a check-up.
If you’d like to know more about the taxing system in the Netherlands, you should check out our article on 10 things to know about taxes in the Netherlands as an expat.
Should the data on dual citizenship be removed from access by any of the tax authorities, due to concerns over ethnic profiling? Let us know in the comments!
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