People on Tax Authority's fraud blacklist must be allowed to challenge their assessments

The tens of thousands of people on the Tax Authority's fraud black list must be given the opportunity to challenge their tax assessments of the past years, Advocate General Rene Niessen said in advice to the Supreme Court, RTL Nieuws and Trouw reports. The advice of the Advocate General is usually adopted.

As the controversial blacklist was illegal, any extra assessment done based on the list could end up scrapped. Only if there is "very serious tax fraud" should an assessment be upheld, Niessen advised. This could have major consequences for the Tax Authority, Trouw and RTL wrote, as people on the blacklist were often monitored and checked for five years. That could mean many hundreds of thousands of filed objections.

Last year the news agencies revealed that the Tax Authority used a secret system for years in which employees could register signals of possible fraud. This system, FSV, contained about 270 thousand taxpayers, including some two thousand minors. The taxpayers weren't informed of the suspicions against them. Everyone on the FSV will be notified of their presence on the blacklist this year. The system is no longer in use.

Niessen believes that many taxpayers who receive this notification will suspect that their poor assessment in the past is related to the blacklist. But in many cases, the deadline for filing objections will already be over. Niessen advised the Supreme Court to scrap the deadline for people on the blacklist, because they were previously unable to object as they did not know of the suspicions against them.