Far more children taken from homes of victims in tax office benefits scandal

Roughly 25 percent more children were removed from the homes of parents who fell victim to the Dutch tax office’s benefits scandal than previously estimated. A total of 2,090 children were taken from their parents and placed in care during the period from 2015 through June 2022, according to a new calculation by Statistics Netherlands (CBS). The original estimate announced in May suggested the total was 1,675. In the future, the total could rise even higher.

Of the 2,090 children who have been placed in care since 2015, 645 were still not living with their parents or guardians by the end of June of this year. The benefits affair mainly affected households with an ethnically diverse background, single-parent families and families with a low income, Statistics Netherlands concluded earlier this year. The CBS could not say if there is a direct connection between taking custody of the children and the scandal at the Belastingdienst by looking at the updated figures. However, in all cases, it concerns children whose parents were victims.

The benefits scandal at the Belastingdienst, the country’s tax authority, involved the use of a controversial method of profiling parents to determine if they were likely to be fraudulently claiming childcare benefits. The criteria often involved racial and ethnic profiling, as well as whether or not the parents involved had a second nationality.

Once identified as fraudsters, a designation that was frequently inaccurate, the victims were forced to pay back all of the benefits they received in the past, and were cut off from future benefits. This put victims into positions of extreme stress and financial insecurity.

The number of custodial placements identified by the CBS on Wednesday is higher because the statistics office previously only had figures up to and including 2021. In the meantime, more victims have reported to the UHT, the organization set up to review individual cases for compensation claims. This organization must also use a recovery plan to ensure that children have access to professional help and an amount of money so that they can get their lives back on track.

The CBS researchers used the list of victims supplied by the UHT as its basis. Subsequently, they looked at how many children of disadvantaged persons had been placed in care. That does not immediately mean that these custodial placements are the result of the benefits scandal, the CBS said.

The statistics office has not investigated the causes of the custodial placement because it does not have access to those case files. Also, only guardianships that concluded due to a youth protection measure ordered by the court were included. The actual number of children placed in care may be even higher.