In large, complex tax cases, the tax authorities do not always submit all relevant information to the court, concludes the Tax, Surcharges and Customs Inspectorate after investigation.

Legal protection for citizens and companies is at stake. Files must be complete.

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The inspectorate urges the tax authorities to ensure that files are complete. “This is about the legal protection of citizens and companies,” says Inspector General Bart Snels. “When a case goes to court, it must have all the information, because that ensures a fair trial.”

Lawyers complained against RTL News two years ago that in tax matters, it is often “push and pull” to get the entire file on the table. “Then you're down by one zero,” one of them said. That makes it more difficult to make a good defense in court.

Do not inflate

The then Secretary of State for Finance Van Rij acknowledged that sometimes things go wrong. But according to him, these were just incidents. “I really want to contradict the view that this is a dime, because that's just not the case. Every statement is one too many, but we shouldn't blow it up.”

Watch the interview with Van Rij here:

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Nevertheless, the inspectorate found the signals worrying and launched an investigation. Examining five major tax cases reveals patterns that show that files are not always provided in full.

Documents outside files

If a dispute over a tax return leads to court, the law requires that “all documents relating to the case” must be submitted to court. But in practice, employees of the tax authorities give this a different translation, so that documents are sometimes unfairly excluded from the file that is submitted to court.

The inspectorate also concludes from discussions with stakeholders that some employees of the tax authorities do not want to overwhelm judges with information. That is why they are already making a selection of the pieces themselves. Even though the law states that all information must be presented to the court.

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