At the end of last year, Minister Hugo de Jonge for Housing announced that people who have to make ends meet on an amount of up to 120 percent of the social minimum will receive a rent reduction.
They will pay a maximum of 575 euros per month. This concerns about half a million residents of housing corporation homes.
‘Data did not match’
Due to an error at the Tax Authorities, 11,000 households almost unjustly received that rent reduction. Their income is ‘unknown’, but in the systems they appeared as if they had a ‘low income’, writes NRC.
They noticed the mistake at the Amsterdam housing corporation Ymere. “We saw that the information that the Tax and Customs Administration passed on did not always correspond to the data that we ourselves have,” a spokesperson told the newspaper.
“We reported this to the Tax and Customs Administration, as did two other corporations. Then the tax authorities decided to put the brakes on.”
‘Little flaw’
The households themselves had not yet been informed of the rent reduction. “The Tax and Customs Administration saw in time that a small flaw had been made. That has been corrected,” a spokesman for De Jonge told NRC.
The error would have been fixed. Tenants whose income is unknown must now contact their housing corporation themselves in order to be entitled to the rent reduction. This saves tenants an average of 57 euros.
The Tax and Customs Administration is investigating how the error occurred. Half a million tenants will receive the rent reduction on schedule.
