Tax rules used to be even more difficult, and filing the tax forms used to be manual. So, at least in NL there's been some progress over two decades (compared t

Tax rules used to be even more difficult, and filing the tax forms used to be manual. So, at least in NL there's been some progress over two decades (compared to in the USA, as mentioned in the article), and filing a simple yearly tax statement is indeed reduced to 20-30 minutes. Mainly because many exceptions have been deprecated over the last decades, also reducing the operating costs of the DTA. The system of subsidies ("toeslagen") for rent, health care, child daycare and such is complicated indeed... but not really related to tax (although it is sometimes capped based on the income). It was a political coincidence/agreement that the responsibilities for paying those subsidies was put at the Dutch Tax Administration, as that agency was more used to receiving (tax) payments than paying subsidies to citizens. Culturally, handing out money didn't 'fit' the tax administration well in the beginning, but there was no other agency in NL that was deemed capable of getting it done in a short time.