By: Manfred Berrevoets
MIDDELBURG – Today the FIOD searched a building in Middelburg in a criminal investigation into tax fraud and forgery. A 64-year-old man from Middelburg is suspected of having ordered the prohibited behavior of two companies, as a result of which too few social insurance contributions were paid to the tax authorities. As a result, the Dutch State has lost more than 1.3 million euros in social contributions.
Following the findings of the Tax Authorities during the audit of payroll tax returns, the FIOD launched an investigation. It was suspected that the payroll tax returns were incorrect and were substantiated with false statements. As a result, too few social contributions were levied in the Netherlands.
It concerns an employment agency in an EU country that seconded EU employees to a Dutch company. If an employee is posted to another EU country for a maximum of two years, he will in principle remain socially insured in the country of origin and no social contributions will have to be paid in the Netherlands. For this, the employee must apply for an A1 statement in his country of origin.
It is suspected that these A1 statements were never applied for, but were falsely drawn up by the employer with the aim of not having to withhold social security contributions from the employees’ wages and pay them to the tax authorities in the Netherlands. These false copies may have been used to substantiate the payroll tax returns.
The FIOD suspects that this construction was specially set up so that the suspect could supply cheaper labor in the Netherlands and thus obtained an economic and tax advantage. The suspect was in charge of the companies and presumably also ordered the fraud.
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