Civil servant in concealed memo damning about ‘reprehensible actions’ tax authorities | Inland

Follow the interrogation below via Leon Brandsema’s tweets.

In 2017, civil servant Sandra Palmen has already written a memo in which she strongly condemns the approach of the Tax and Customs Administration. That advice follows a case lost by the tax authorities at the Council of State against a duped parent from the now infamous CAF 11 case. Palmen’s memo is devastating. The tax authorities have acted ‘unlawfully’ and ‘carelessly’ and even violated legal principles.

Parts of the published memo were still painted off, but committee member and SP MP Renske Leijten has Palmen nominate those documents. That content turns out to be even more devastating than the rest of the memo. For example, in 2017 Palmen explicitly advised not to appeal, to compensate the affected parent from this case and to reconsider all other pending cases in the file.

‘How is it possible?’

Palmen condemns the actions of the tax authorities in harsh words. How was it possible to stop the benefits of 300 parents, she wonders. “The Tax and Customs Administration has acted reprehensibly”, Palmen writes, according to her, that approach “does not deserve the beauty prize”. In the interview, Palmen added that the approach of the Tax Authorities is a ‘violation of the general principles of good administration’.

The lawyer is also looking ahead to an inquiry that the National Ombudsman is conducting into the state of affairs. She expects “a great deal of criticism” and recommendations from the Ombudsman. She advises the management of the tax authorities to adopt these recommendations, ‘because otherwise escalation will take place at the level of the State Secretary’.

Palmen tells the House of Representatives that the member of the management team she is in contact with was ‘shocked by the advice’. That manager tells Palmen that it is ‘very good advice’, but adds that ‘this is going to be an issue’.

Despite the strong words, nothing happens with Palmen’s memo, whose position is already lifted after six months. The advice is circulated within the top of the tax authorities, but the tough approach of the tax authorities will continue for years to come.

–