Court of Audit to look into ‘operation to rectify repayment of childcare benefits’

The House of Representatives of the Dutch parliament has asked the Netherlands Court of Audit to look into the way in which the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration has been dealing with parents who were wrongly ordered to repay their childcare benefits.

The Court of Audit will be examining – through its impartial lens – the effectiveness of the temporary unit set up by the Tax and Customs Administration (which is part of the Ministry of Finance) in terms of its ability to compensate the parents in question. We will be assessing how quickly those parents who were wrongly ordered to repay childcare benefits have received their compensation payments, and also whether the procedures used for assessing compensation entitlements and making compensation payments are sufficiently robust. We will be talking both to parents who have already received compensation payments and to parents still waiting for their payments. We will also be interviewing staff at the temporary unit and examining the unit’s operating procedures by scrutinising individual cases. We will be reporting our findings to the Dutch House of Representatives as part of our 2020 accountability audit, which is published every year on the third Wednesday in May.

The letter is only available in Dutch.