The Committee on Finance visited the Tax Authority in The Hague on Monday, June 16. During the visit, current issues such as the complexity of the tax system, border issues, and the recovery operation for box 3 were discussed. Senators Pim van Ballekom, Marjolein van der Linden, Rian Vogels (VVD), Eugène Heijnen, Elly van Wijk (BBB), Gom van Strien (PVV), Martin van Rooijen (50PLUS), Ferd Crone (GroenLinks-PvdA), and Janny Bakker-Klein (CDA) participated in the visit.
Peter Smink, Director-General of the Tax Authority, and Sezen van Wier-Tas, Deputy Director-General of Taxation, welcomed the committee. They highlighted the concrete plans, challenges, and ambitions for the Tax Authority. In 2020, a new Tax Authority was established, according to Smink, by splitting the service into Taxes, Allowances, and Customs. In recent years, much attention has been paid to improving service delivery, which was previously reactive.
In the next five years, the Tax Authority aims to connect with society, including establishing a think tank for young people aged 15 to 27. The service focuses on modernizing its IT and improving service delivery and enforcement. Additionally, the Tax Authority wants to be an attractive employer, even for hard-to-recruit IT specialists. According to Director-General Smink, the accumulation of tax rules complicates implementation. The Senate could play a role in simplifying the system by paying extra attention to feasibility and the legal validity of laws and regulations in legislative proposals.
After the plenary session, senators spoke with staff at various tables about several pressing issues. One of these concerned the complexity of the tax system. This has resulted in it being difficult for the more than 28,000 employees of the Tax Authority to apply the human scale. In recent years, significant investments have been made in customer contacts, also to accommodate people who have difficulty filling out their tax returns. Employees receive not only knowledge training but also training in empathy and conversation techniques. The well-known blue letters – the Tax Authority sends out 140 million each year – have been worded more clearly than before, partly thanks to citizen panels.
Supervision of public benefit organizations (ANBI) poses challenges for the Tax Authority, as became clear at another table. Donations to these ANBI organizations are tax-deductible, and 5.3 billion donation dollars flow in annually. The challenge is that assessing an ANBI application is difficult, and there is no accountability model at the end of the ANBI status. Because the Netherlands has 44,000 charities and family foundations, the Tax Authority has set up a separate counter for this.
Finally, much attention was paid to the legal recovery for box 3. The Supreme Courts ruling of December 24, 2021, revealed that the taxation in box 3 has been contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights since 2017. The cabinet has therefore provided taxpayers with legal recovery for the years 2017 to 2022. The Tax Authority aims to ease the burden on both citizens and the service in this legal recovery, also to keep it workable. The Law on the Counter-Evidence Regulation Box 3 (36.706), which is currently under consideration by the Senate, provides a temporary solution. In the run-up to the approval of this law, the Actual Yield Declaration (OWR) form has been developed. This form will be integrated into the tax return starting in 2025. A new system will come into effect in 2028.