The government possibly gave thousands of allowance parents unjustified compensation: « How is it possible that we find out so late? »

Due to an administrative blunder, the Ministry of Finance may have wrongly designated and compensated for thousands of people as victims in the Surcharge Scandal. The Ministry has been keeping an internal report about this secret for months. According to UHT director Anne Coenen, it is about ‘a lot of parents’ whose application with the correct information was probably assessed differently.

This is evident from internal information from the Restorations Implementation Organization (UHT), which is in the hands of NRC. A spokesperson for responsible State Secretary Sandra Palmen (Surcharges, NSC) confirms that the internal findings were already shared with the political leadership in October. According to the spokesperson, « the reliability and usability » is still being investigated.

These are parents who have applied for compensation at UHT in recent years because the Tax Authorities would not have sent them a ‘recall letter’ before their childcare allowance was stopped. With such a letter, the tax authorities asked parents to determine more information to determine whether they were really entitled to the allowance. This could, for example, concern data about income, the childcare used or the number of reception hours.

The recall letter followed an earlier ‘invitation letter’. If parents did not respond to such letters at all, the allowance could be stopped and eventually recovered. Many parents who reported to UHT for compensation said they never received a remaining letter. As a result, they had not had the opportunity to repair incorrect data or to supplement missing information.

Because UHT could not find for years in the systems of the Tax Authorities or the remaining letters were sent, all these applicants were recognized as victims in the Surcharge Scandal for ‘individual prejudice’ at the Tax Authorities. According to the so -called Catshuis scheme, they receive a reimbursement of 30,000 euros – or more if the damage has been greater. Any debts are canceled. Their children are also entitled to a maximum of 10,000 euros compensation per child.

Files recovered

But UHT established last October after internal investigation that the Tax Authorities did indeed send many of these parents several letters with requests for information, according to internal documents. These parents did not respond to that, after which the allowance was stopped because the parent failed to share the required data.

The internal investigation was started after signals from employees that may still be information about the letters sent in the computer systems of the Tax Authorities. During the investigation, UHT came across files that showed to whom which letter had been sent, and to which address.

« We rated a lot of parents for a long time without having knowledge of these files, » said UHT director Anne Coenen at the end of February during a meeting of which NRC viewed a recording. « That sheds a somewhat different light on what we have done so far. »

According to Coenen, parents who did not respond to information requests from the Tax Authorities for a long time are often wrongly labeled as a victim in the recovery operation. « If people have received two letters that they never responded to, and then the allowance was stopped and they did not respond to that, and then the allowance was recovered, then you could say: then there is nothing special going on. »

Employees of UHT with whom NRC spoke, say that in around 20 percent of the files they have missed, evidence of a letter letter sent was the only reason to acknowledge the parent as duped. In that case this group would consist of 8,000 people (in total more than 41,000 people were considered duped.)

The Ministry of Finance says that it can be able to give ‘no actual answer’ to the question of how many people may be wrongly recognized as a victim, because there is « no registration that can be concluded how many parents are considered non-response as a victim on the basis of exclusively non-response. »

Other insight

If the additional investigation by Finance shows that people are indeed wrongly recognized as a victim, they do not have to fear that the government recovers the compensation received. According to Coenen « it is paramount » that money has already been promised to those involved. « We are not going to arrive there, » said Coenen during the recorded meeting. « But it may be that it is said: this information should have been involved (in the assessment), and could have leaded to a different insight. »

Of almost all people who have registered as a victim, UHT has now determined whether they are eligible for the Catshuis scheme. Is also of More than 90 percent of the recognized victims determined whether their damage is more than 30,000 euros. Deputies can use different routes for the final determination of the damage amount. One of them is that of the (equal) worthy recovery, from Princess Laurentien.

What needs to be done with parents who are wrongly recognized as a victim, but whose damage has not yet been definitively established is not clear. State Secretary Palmen (NSC) still has to make a decision about this.

In TV program Buitenhof confirmed Palmen this month the criticism of NSC party leader Pieter Omtzigt that the spacious Catshuis scheme from 2020 also gives people without damage, while It is precisely the heaviest victims often have to wait years for help. « As a result, there have been many people who have registered. There are also people who are not duped, » said Palmen. According to her, the cabinet counted on « a few thousand » victims who would report. The large number of recognized victims is one of the reasons that the recovery operation surcharges still difficult.

UHT director Coenen called it during the recorded meeting « all in all quite complicated » that has now been established internally that many people are wrongly recognized as a victim. « We would all have preferred that we had known at the very beginning of these files. We also wonder: how is it actually that we have only found out so late? »

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