Follow live: Former tax officials blame Social Affairs | Inland

Follow the interrogations below via the tweets of reporter Leon Brandsema.

According to Veld, he pointed out about ten years ago that the tax authorities’ approach was too harsh. People who made small mistakes, or, for example, did not pay their own contribution, immediately lost the supplement for the whole year. For example, an error of 100 euros could already lead to a recovery of 10,000 euros.

Veld says that he already warned in 2010 after a lawsuit that this approach is far too harsh. “It would be better not to reclaim the entire childcare allowance in these cases, in order to make that sanction less severe,” he advised at the time. Veld says this in the House of Representatives on Wednesday morning, where he will be heard about his role in the benefits affair.

The then State Secretary of Finance Frans Weekers agreed, says Veld. In his own words, Veld preferred that people still had to pay an unpaid personal contribution, with a fine on top of that. “I found it uncomfortable to reclaim because I saw the strictness of the rules,” said the official.

But the approach was not adjusted, and according to Veld this was due to the ‘obstinacy’ of the Ministry of Social Affairs. According to Veld, the official top of that ministry, responsible for the policy on childcare allowance, did not want a more lenient approach. “This has been well thought out, is a deliberate policy and the law had to be implemented,” was the response that Veld heard.

A new attempt, a few years later, to make the approach a little more gentle, also failed at Social Affairs, according to Veld.

Commission chairman Chris van Dam was left with a bitter feeling at the end about pointing to Social Affairs, but the lack of a solution. “I have the feeling that many doctors have looked at it, but the patient has passed away in the meantime.”

Memory

In any case, there was some noise and irritation between Veld and the committee members, fueled by the fact that Veld’s memory turned out to be a lot less flawless when he was asked about the harsh fraud approach used by the Tax and Customs Administration. For example, the committee presented an internal report in which tax director Hans Blokpoel is said to have said that he wanted to ‘close’ all allowances, including the good ones.

Blokpoel denied having said anything like this during his interrogation earlier this week. Veld was less certain, he could not remember: “I have a good memory, but not that good either.” Veld was able to figure out from his memory that there had been talk of ‘the risk that the good would suffer from evil’ in the approach.

Hard moist

Veld’s line was followed by Gerard Blankestijn, director of Supplements from 2011 to 2018, along. He is seen by victims as one of the evil brains behind the tough approach of the tax authorities. He says he already ‘raised’ the hard recovery shortly after taking office.

Blankestijn raised this with his manager Veld. But according to him, it turned out that this was simply the line advocated by Social Affairs, supported by jurisprudence. According to Blankestijn, doing something about this would be ‘quite a process’.

After Blankestijn’s interrogation, his successor Agaath Cleyndert joins in for the last interrogation of the day.

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