The cabinet falls over the benefits affair
The cabinet falls over the benefits affair: what went wrong again?
January 15, 2021 at 10:15 •
NL
In the midst of the coronavirus crisis and two months before the elections, the cabinet falls over the benefits affair. Thousands of parents were wrongly classified as fraudsters by the tax authorities. This had huge financial consequences for innocent parents, according to a report published by a House of Representatives committee in December. What is the benefits affair again? We have listed it for you.
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In short:
- Around 26,000 parents have been unfairly victims of child storage fraud.
- This is due to a tough fraud approach by the tax authorities from 2013 to at least 2019.
- If a parent had provided incorrect or incomplete information, undersigned or paid too little personal contribution for childcare, the entire child allowance for that year had to be reimbursed.
- Parents had to repay huge amounts of money and often ran into major financial problems as a result.
- In September 2018, the affair came to light. It led to the resignation of State Secretary for Finance Menno Snel.
- Researchers of the benefits affair spoke of “institutional bias” and called the method “discriminatory”.
How it all started:What has now come to be called the benefits affair started with a number of files on the desk of lawyer Eva Gonzálex Pérez from Helmond. It was the files of the parents she assists that got the case rolling.
Her husband, Ahmet Gökçe, is the owner and director of the Eindhoven childcare agency Dadim, which the tax authorities started investigating in 2013. Hundreds of parents had wrongly stopped the childcare allowance and reclaimed. Gonzálex Pérez, who assists more than forty of these parents, raised the issue with CDA MP Pieter Omtzigt, who was determined to do so.
The lawyer has been working on the case for seven years and has already experienced everything, she previously told Omroep Brabant. “As the years go by, you really come across a lot of things. Sometimes I felt like a detective.” For example, there were investigations that completely exonerated her clients, to documents that appeared to be withheld in her file.
The benefits affair turned out to be much larger than just Gonzálex Pérez's files. Although her clients have now been compensated, she continues to follow the case closely. “This is my file. My cessation file. Even though the whole world is now involved.”
The impact:Tens of thousands of parents have been wrongly portrayed as fraudsters. This includes Leigh Anne Jansen with her husband and three children. They were an ordinary Eindhoven family but ended up in a bizarre situation that drastically changed their lives. As a result, they had to go into debt and move. They lost a total of 21,000 euros.
Leigh Anne Jansen received 9,200 euros in compensation at the end of last year, but was afraid to publish that at the time. “Maybe something will go wrong soon, a new Secretary of State will change the rules again and we'll have to pay it back anyway. I have the idea that we are at the mercy of the tax authorities again and how can we still trust them?”
The reconstruction:The Parliamentary Interrogation Committee on Allowances came up with a reconstruction of the benefits affair in December. In a report, the committee presented its findings after weeks of investigation and a series of controversial oath interviews. This also needed to clarify the political and official responsibility for the government scandal.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte, among others, was heard by the committee, as were former minister Lodewijk Asscher and former Secretary of State Eric Wiebes. But almost the entire official top concerned also had to declare under oath.
The statements showed that the officials and the political top missed many signs that things were going quite wrong at the tax authorities. This is how, in the words of the former boss of the tax authorities, “a disaster in slow motion” could happen. All the leaders who were heard found it “terrible”. Little by little, it became increasingly clear how the fraud hunt at the tax authorities and the hard work of the allowance system put people in a bind.
The cabinet fallsFrom the start, the committee said it wanted to “take a picture”. The interrogators themselves do not draw any direct conclusions in the report. That's up to the MPs. On Thursday, PvdA leader Lodewijk Asscher already decided to leave because of his responsibility in the benefits affair. A day later, the cabinet fell.
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“300 families whose childcare allowance has been unfairly stopped should be reimbursed immediately”
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