Amsterdam, Utrecht area residents should expect water tax bills dating back years

The over 1.4 million residents of Amsterdam, Noord-Utrecht, and Het Gooi can expect to receive water tax bills dating back years. The Amstel, Gooi, en Vecht Water Board (AGV) still has to collect 653 million euros in water board taxes for the years 2022, 2023, and 2024, and expects to need until 2026 to catch up, NOS reports.

The AGV area is unique in the Netherlands in that the management and implementation of the water board have been separated. The Amstel, Gooi, en Vecht Water Board is the governming authority that conducts research and makes decisions. Waternet handles the executive work - cleaning sewage and wastewater, maintaining the dikes, bridges, and locks, and handling the taxes.

The backlog in tax collection stems from a new and dysfunctional financial-administrative IT system that Waternet started using in the autumn of 2021. Waternet has finally gotten the system up and running and is now catching up on collecting taxes from 2022 to the present. A maximum period of three years applies for sending tax assessments.

The old tax assessments have led to some strange situations. Nathalie De Graaf-Weijers recently received a tax assessment for her mother, who died in June 2021. “Two and a half years after her death, I had completed everything administratively, and then suddenly I get this,” she told NOS. “I called customer service, but they only indicated that I could file an objection. I will lose that because I am an heir.”

The AVG called De Graaf-Weijers’ situation “very annoying.” It promised that affected people wouldn’t have to pay all the back taxes at once. Waternet has already sent about 70 percent of the 2022 tax assessments and is working on the remaining 30 percent. Those for 2023 will follow in February and this year’s after the summer.

“You can choose to pay it in one go or in eight installments. The terms of the different assessments can overlap. If people are paying off three assessments at the same time and it is too much, it is possible to make an alternative payment arrangement,” an AVG spokesperson told NOS. Low-income households can also use the remission scheme.