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You are forgetting that the majority of these people did in fact commit fraud. Or better said: The "gastouder kantoren" which told them they could get free mone

You are forgetting that the majority of these people did in fact commit fraud. Or better said: The "gastouder kantoren" which told them they could get free money from the goverment did in (their name). The fraud revolves around small companies ("gastouder kantoren") thinking they found a loop hole in the law. The short version is they would say: "Hey, do your (grand parents) sometimes baby sit your kids? We'll register them as a 'gastouder' company and now the government will pay for the childcare.". The problem was that these "companies" didn't have things like a proper administration which was required to get the government money. The "gastouder kantoreren" would them make up some fictional administration and get caught. > the reality is much simpler: the Dutch tax office systematically engaged in discrimination, persisted in doing so when this was pointed out to them and made extraordinary efforts to hide their failings rather than to fix it. You are framing this way too simple. The law which mandated them to come down hard on this fraud was written to combat the "Bulgaren fraude" (i.e. the Bulgarian fraud). In which east Europeans (mainly Bulgarians) would come to the Netherlands, claim benefits they weren't entitled to, get paid and then disappear. There was an public uproar and politicians (like Pieter Omtzigt) demanded stricter laws and hard enforcement of those laws to combat this. > persisted in doing so when this was pointed out to them and made extraordinary efforts to hide their failings rather than to fix it. They interpreted the law (which governed their actions) that it required them to come down hard on on fraud. The court initially confirmed (in a ruling) that this was the correct interpenetration of the law. It wasn't until much later that the court reversed on that position. > If not for a single lawyer (González Pérez) persisting this whole thing would have never been brought to light. It's worth mentioning her husband ran such a "gastouder kantoor", which was also investigated. You can look up the court documents online. It was quite clear he was running a fraud because for example all the hour sheets for the "gastouders" were the same.

jacquesm 4y ago
> You are forgetting that the majority of these people did in fact commit fraud. Or better said: The "gastouder kantoren" which told them they could get free money from the goverment did in (their name). That difference is massive and I don't really understand why if you are aware of it you would even try to make the case that the people committed fraud. They were by and large utterly deceived by parties making money hand over fist and the whole reason that situation existed in the first place was because of a bunch of idiotic legislation that made it illegal for people to arrange for their own child minding services in case both parents worked. To the point that even relatives could no longer legally look after the kids without being at risk of all kinds of nastiness. It's a prime example of the dangers of regulatory capture. That a law written for a special case has side effects orders of magnitude larger than the case that it is written for alone should have been a huge red flag for further execution, but instead of stopping they doubled down on it. The biggest problem here is that there isn't a single individual that has been held responsible for any of this, all of the parties involved hide behind one another or play the equivalent of 'just following orders'. Nobody deserves to have their life ruined at the hands of the state, even if there is perceived fraud the remedy should never be worse than that which it is supposed to address. Throwing shade on Pérez is despicable, she deserves a statue for her persistence especially in light of all of the people that went after her and her family, which you are doing as well here. As for what constitutes fraud or not: I highly doubt it was possible within the rules as set to not be in violation of one or more of the rules so you could write that up to '100% fraud'. Personally I'm really happy that I never had to make use of any of these services.
- jsiepkes 4y ago
  > because of a bunch of idiotic legislation that made it illegal for people to arrange for their own child minding services in case both parents worked. Illegal to arrange your own child care? That's simply not true. You can bring your child to your parents, friends or whatever person for day care if you want to. If an accident happens the care takers are most likely not liable. And even if they are liable they are covered by their normal liability insurance (92% of people have a liability insurance in the Netherlands [1]). That is of course unless you start charging money for day care (because then it's a business). > The biggest problem here is that there isn't a single individual that has been held responsible for any of this, all of the parties involved hide behind one another or play the equivalent of 'just following orders'. Because everyone is to blame. And they know it and that's why they are not stirring it up. For example hero of the "toeslagenaffaire" Pieter Omtzigt was one of the people who made it possible. He himself was one of the people most vocal after the "Bulgarenfraude" demanding tough laws and crackdowns on such things. And like I said Perez's husband with his "gastouderkantoor" is also to blame. So everyone is happy with this sort of undirected outcry and some reparation payments "resolvement". > They were by and large utterly deceived by parties making money hand over fist Sure, they were deceived with a story they could get free money. But people also have a responsibility themselves to know there is no such thing as free money. You can debate on how hard the government should or should not have cracked down on them. But it's also not as black and white as you are framing it. > Throwing shade on Pérez is despicable, she deserves a statue [...] You yourself state: "They were by and large utterly deceived by parties making money hand over fist" but stating the fact that Perez's husband ran such a company is "throwing shade on Perez and despicable"? Perhaps instead of saying things are "despicable" and people should get "statues" you should argue why you think it's not a relevant fact. [1] https://www.consumentenbond.nl/aansprakelijkheidsverzekering/gebruikstips https://www.consumentenbond.nl/aansprakelijkheidsverzekering... EDIT: I was wrong about personal liability insurance being required. It is required for your car but not for you as a natural person. Added source stating that 92% of the people in the Netherlands have a personal liability insurance.
  - EtienneK 4y ago
    > they are covered by their normal liability insurance which is mandatory for every person in the Netherlands Personal liability insurance is not mandatory in the Netherlands [1]. And stating it as such makes me doubt a lot of your other claims as well. [1] https://www.abnamro.nl/en/personal/insurance/home-insurances/liability-insurance.html https://www.abnamro.nl/en/personal/insurance/home-insurances... (see FAQ - "Why do I need personal liability insurance" at bottom of page)
radicalbyte 4y ago
Why aren't the people who ran de gastouderkantoren in jail? I'm an immigrant (UK > NL) and don't see how you can give anyone blame here except for the BD being inept and the gastouderkantoren committing fraud. The systems here are complex and there are a lot of really dumb rules (like a flat on savings based on a 4% interest rate - instead of the earnings being treated as flat income as in other countries). Taxes are very hard for non-natives, they use a formal style of Dutch which can be hard for people still learning the language.... and learning a language if you have small kids AND WORK(!!) isn't easy (for me it was very easy but I didn't have kids then and I'm in the top 0.1% of intelligence if you believe that such test aren't BS).
- jacquesm 4y ago
  This is exactly it. If there is any culpability it is on behalf of the gastouderkantoren (and even there: lots of honest mistakes were made) not on behalf of those that got sucked into a system they barely understood (and which plenty of Dutch natives also don't understand). Don't get me started on forfaits, they should be illegal. The tax office essentially gets to declare what they believe you could have earned instead of what you actually earned and then they tax you on that.
  - radicalbyte 4y ago
    Totally agreed. There's a whole industry of shady companies who help you with tax-savings, for example a very common one in IT is companies who "help" you claim R&D or innovation funding. I've seen that used a lot but never for anything which was actually innovitive.
    - yolo3000 4y ago
      The WSBO is a total fraud. But the same happens in every European country using common funds. And despite the trend in this thread to label people in eastern Europe as fraudster, the native dutch commit a lot of fraud themselves. It's easy to prey on the vulnerable fraudster and not look at the state making 'special' and unequal laws for bigger companies, deleting their debts, reducing their taxes, just because the state makes more money if they don't leave. How about the Tax office/BD, who is connected to all the banks and transactions, who as you said above charged you on your 4% on fictional, when they could have easily seen how much you made, or who only reimbursed the people who sued the government? I could go on forever. The people in this thread who defend the officials who made possible for children to be taken away from their families for these small or even inexistent offences are mad hypocrites.
noobermin 4y ago
It did however turn into quite the incident in which an election was called IIRC, although the PM was eventually re-elected, so it can't just be "it was fraud actually and the government was not at fault." Ironically, your framing sounds too simple too.
fatuna 4y ago
Also interesting, the "Bulgaren fraude" was instigated by Dutch 'entrepreneurs'. They would go to Bulgaria, organize bus trips to the Netherlands, and help people setup their handouts. For a fee, of course. I'm not sure if those people ever went to jail...
- throwaway8689 4y ago
  Don't think you're putting Bulgaria in a good light here. No reasonable person would think its legitimate to get a bus to another country, sign up for welfare, and get the bus home again. Those Bulgarians are not idiots, they are willing participants in a scam.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Presumably they are targetting the poorest and most desperate Bulgarians, so I'm not sure why this reflects badly on Bulgaria? Do we blame the whole country when someone gets caught as a drug mule? Or do we reflect that they are many ways a victim of the crime?
  - yolo3000 4y ago
    Not from Bulgaria, but why do you generalise? Do you realise that a country has people from all walks of life, from simple farmers to distinguished scientists, explorers, people of culture, people who have done and will do remarkable things. Do you think the dutch are better than the bulgarians? People should not even think in these terms.
    - throwaway8689 4y ago
      I replied to a comment specifically about Bulgaria and Nederlands. Had it been the other way around, I would have reversed the labels. "People should not even think in these terms." Thanks for telling us all how we are allowed to think.
      - yolo3000 4y ago
maxboone 4y ago
Even though it's very appealing to think we didn't do wrong here and the blame is with the fraudsters, this take is too apologetic towards the government and too harsh towards the folks who got their kids taken away. Personally, I blame a longer standing issue of politics designing laws that can not be executed as intended, instead of racism. However, these politics hit minority groups as these are most affected by such legislation. I do believe racism did seriously accelerate the issues here. In the EU, we have a weberian bureaucracy, this basically compiles to that the institutions such as the belastingdienst will get legislation and execute it as "efficiently" as possible. However, in recent (±15-20y) politics it is expected that the institutions will actually think / care / morally judge the tasks they are supposed to execute. That just doesn't work, period. A system such as that is implemented in the US, where a change of political party means the replacement of the bureaucracy / government staffing. Either we: 1. Start politicizing our institutions and stop asking the bureaucracy to do task X as efficiently as possible. Or, 2. We make sure that the laws are not written with just the intention in mind, but executionability (and what-if-applied-to-the-extreme) as well. Unfortunately I don't really see any party talking about institutional change at the moment for the new elections, it's mostly clout chasing in their programmes. That said, the election is for the PS.
- throwaway8689 4y ago
  Service is 503 right now. How did fraud escalate to kids being taken away?
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    Its not uncommon: if parents are charged (not even convicted) with fraud, or other criminal offenses, the social services automatically start to become involved - and often will default to "doing something" to "protect" the child from its "criminal parents". Its a problem of incentives and metrics for the social service caseworkers - if they do not act, and "something happens", they get the book thrown at them. If they do act, and there was no risk, well it was better to be "safe" than "sorry" right? Basically there's zero negative outcome for the case worker or social service system when they break up a family or take a child into care. There are negative outcomes if they fail to do so.
belter 4y ago
Amazing how you managed to try to mitigate the actions, of a Tax Office, even the Dutch Minister of Finance admitted is institutionally racist. "Van Rij admits institutional racism is a problem at Dutch tax office" - https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/05/van-rij-admits-institutional-racism-is-a-problem-at-dutch-tax-office/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/05/van-rij-admits-institu...
ArnoVW 4y ago
1) if new rules state that you can get paid for taking care of someone, then asking for that money is not fraud. You are due that money, by law. This was pointed out when the law was being discussed at the time in parliament. 2) if your supplier has it's admin not in shape (or is comitting fraud), then you are not a fraudster. 3) yes, the law mandated them to track fraud. It also mandates not labelling innocent people as fraudsters. 4) the awesome power of the state comes with great responsibilities. After 3 years of newspaper articles and commissions and debate, it is clear that that bar was not met. The crux of this issue is the fact that, yes, the state uses heuristics to operate efficiently. And courts have ruled that the state is allowed to do this. The border patrol frisks certain people more often. The tax authorities control self-employed people more often. That's not cool if you are one of those groups, and we would all do well to empathise with them. But as a society we have not found a better solution. The alternative is frisking everyone or having some sort of panopticon, which is not great neither. The real problem arises when the heuristic becomes a hard rule. And when the heuristic does not lead to an indicator "to be investigated in a neutral way", but to "likely fraudster, interpret anything you find as fraud" or even "known fraudster". Just because there is a statistical correlation doesn't mean that it's always true. This is where the tax authorities went wrong. And this is why they are now compensating people.
- em500 4y ago
  2) if your supplier has it's admin not in shape (or is comitting fraud), then you are not a fraudster.innocent people as fraudsters. In this particular case, the law is written that the liability lies solely with the people applying for the subsidy (which are the parents, they need to register how many hours they wish to apply for, not the daycare providers). Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
em500 4y ago
> The fraud revolves around small companies ("gastouder kantoren") thinking they found a loop hole in the law. The short version is they would say: "Hey, do your (grand parents) sometimes baby sit your kids? We'll register them as a 'gastouder' company and now the government will pay for the childcare.". The problem was that these "companies" didn't have things like a proper administration which was required to get the government money. The "gastouder kantoreren" would them make up some fictional administration and get caught. People might not realize how lucrative this construction was (and still is, AFAIK it still works if you do all your admin correctly). Just like in the rest of the world, it's not uncommon in the Netherlands for grandparents or unemployed relatives to provide daycare for free. But if they register as an official 'gastouder' (guest parent), they can get about €1400/child/month in child care subsidy if the parent(s) are on minimum wage. For context, minimum full time wage is around €1900/month, and 'AOW' (social security for retirees) about €1300/month. Median income in the country is below €3000/worker/month, so grandparents taking care of 2 grandchildren taking the full subsidy would bump them comfortably into the upper half of income earners (all amounts after-tax).
- avar 4y ago
  Yes it's "lucrative", and there's certainly fraud involved. But the tone of comment (and certainly the rest of this thread at large) seems to be losing sight of how lucrative it is for everyone involved. If you have a child in The Netherlands you're entitled to a daycare subsidy. The subsidy is the same whether you send your kid to the daycare down the road, or if you pay a "gastouder kantoren". It should be obvious how the likely signs of "fraud" in this case are highly correlated with saving the state money overall. If you're paying one of your parents to take care of your kids that's usually win-win, if they weren't getting that income they might in turn be eligible for other poverty subsidies from the state. The overhead of paying a "real" daycare is also going to be much higher in administrative overhead etc. The average daycare worker is also likely to be of an age and inclination (given that they've accepted a job taking care of the kids of strangers) to be otherwise productive elsewhere in the economy, which is less likely to be the case with parents willing to act as a "gastouder kantoren". So cracking down on this in particular seems to me to be at least partially a case of penny wise pound foolish, which the Dutch are otherwise pretty good about avoiding. This system can absorb a lot of fraud before it would become less beneficial overall than the alternative.
moss2 4y ago
> A lot of people commited fraud. Therefore, it was right of the Dutch government to separate 1100 children from their families. Wtf?

jacquesm 4y ago

> You are forgetting that the majority of these people did in fact commit fraud. Or better said: The "gastouder kantoren" which told them they could get free money from the goverment did in (their name). That difference is massive and I don't really understand why if you are aware of it you would even try to make the case that the people committed fraud. They were by and large utterly deceived by parties making money hand over fist and the whole reason that situation existed in the first place was because of a bunch of idiotic legislation that made it illegal for people to arrange for their own child minding services in case both parents worked. To the point that even relatives could no longer legally look after the kids without being at risk of all kinds of nastiness. It's a prime example of the dangers of regulatory capture. That a law written for a special case has side effects orders of magnitude larger than the case that it is written for alone should have been a huge red flag for further execution, but instead of stopping they doubled down on it. The biggest problem here is that there isn't a single individual that has been held responsible for any of this, all of the parties involved hide behind one another or play the equivalent of 'just following orders'. Nobody deserves to have their life ruined at the hands of the state, even if there is perceived fraud the remedy should never be worse than that which it is supposed to address. Throwing shade on Pérez is despicable, she deserves a statue for her persistence especially in light of all of the people that went after her and her family, which you are doing as well here. As for what constitutes fraud or not: I highly doubt it was possible within the rules as set to not be in violation of one or more of the rules so you could write that up to '100% fraud'. Personally I'm really happy that I never had to make use of any of these services.

jsiepkes 4y ago
> because of a bunch of idiotic legislation that made it illegal for people to arrange for their own child minding services in case both parents worked. Illegal to arrange your own child care? That's simply not true. You can bring your child to your parents, friends or whatever person for day care if you want to. If an accident happens the care takers are most likely not liable. And even if they are liable they are covered by their normal liability insurance (92% of people have a liability insurance in the Netherlands [1]). That is of course unless you start charging money for day care (because then it's a business). > The biggest problem here is that there isn't a single individual that has been held responsible for any of this, all of the parties involved hide behind one another or play the equivalent of 'just following orders'. Because everyone is to blame. And they know it and that's why they are not stirring it up. For example hero of the "toeslagenaffaire" Pieter Omtzigt was one of the people who made it possible. He himself was one of the people most vocal after the "Bulgarenfraude" demanding tough laws and crackdowns on such things. And like I said Perez's husband with his "gastouderkantoor" is also to blame. So everyone is happy with this sort of undirected outcry and some reparation payments "resolvement". > They were by and large utterly deceived by parties making money hand over fist Sure, they were deceived with a story they could get free money. But people also have a responsibility themselves to know there is no such thing as free money. You can debate on how hard the government should or should not have cracked down on them. But it's also not as black and white as you are framing it. > Throwing shade on Pérez is despicable, she deserves a statue [...] You yourself state: "They were by and large utterly deceived by parties making money hand over fist" but stating the fact that Perez's husband ran such a company is "throwing shade on Perez and despicable"? Perhaps instead of saying things are "despicable" and people should get "statues" you should argue why you think it's not a relevant fact. [1] https://www.consumentenbond.nl/aansprakelijkheidsverzekering/gebruikstips https://www.consumentenbond.nl/aansprakelijkheidsverzekering... EDIT: I was wrong about personal liability insurance being required. It is required for your car but not for you as a natural person. Added source stating that 92% of the people in the Netherlands have a personal liability insurance.
- EtienneK 4y ago
  > they are covered by their normal liability insurance which is mandatory for every person in the Netherlands Personal liability insurance is not mandatory in the Netherlands [1]. And stating it as such makes me doubt a lot of your other claims as well. [1] https://www.abnamro.nl/en/personal/insurance/home-insurances/liability-insurance.html https://www.abnamro.nl/en/personal/insurance/home-insurances... (see FAQ - "Why do I need personal liability insurance" at bottom of page)

radicalbyte 4y ago

Why aren't the people who ran de gastouderkantoren in jail? I'm an immigrant (UK > NL) and don't see how you can give anyone blame here except for the BD being inept and the gastouderkantoren committing fraud. The systems here are complex and there are a lot of really dumb rules (like a flat on savings based on a 4% interest rate - instead of the earnings being treated as flat income as in other countries). Taxes are very hard for non-natives, they use a formal style of Dutch which can be hard for people still learning the language.... and learning a language if you have small kids AND WORK(!!) isn't easy (for me it was very easy but I didn't have kids then and I'm in the top 0.1% of intelligence if you believe that such test aren't BS).

jacquesm 4y ago
This is exactly it. If there is any culpability it is on behalf of the gastouderkantoren (and even there: lots of honest mistakes were made) not on behalf of those that got sucked into a system they barely understood (and which plenty of Dutch natives also don't understand). Don't get me started on forfaits, they should be illegal. The tax office essentially gets to declare what they believe you could have earned instead of what you actually earned and then they tax you on that.
- radicalbyte 4y ago
  Totally agreed. There's a whole industry of shady companies who help you with tax-savings, for example a very common one in IT is companies who "help" you claim R&D or innovation funding. I've seen that used a lot but never for anything which was actually innovitive.
  - yolo3000 4y ago
    The WSBO is a total fraud. But the same happens in every European country using common funds. And despite the trend in this thread to label people in eastern Europe as fraudster, the native dutch commit a lot of fraud themselves. It's easy to prey on the vulnerable fraudster and not look at the state making 'special' and unequal laws for bigger companies, deleting their debts, reducing their taxes, just because the state makes more money if they don't leave. How about the Tax office/BD, who is connected to all the banks and transactions, who as you said above charged you on your 4% on fictional, when they could have easily seen how much you made, or who only reimbursed the people who sued the government? I could go on forever. The people in this thread who defend the officials who made possible for children to be taken away from their families for these small or even inexistent offences are mad hypocrites.

noobermin 4y ago

It did however turn into quite the incident in which an election was called IIRC, although the PM was eventually re-elected, so it can't just be "it was fraud actually and the government was not at fault." Ironically, your framing sounds too simple too.

fatuna 4y ago

Also interesting, the "Bulgaren fraude" was instigated by Dutch 'entrepreneurs'. They would go to Bulgaria, organize bus trips to the Netherlands, and help people setup their handouts. For a fee, of course. I'm not sure if those people ever went to jail...

throwaway8689 4y ago
Don't think you're putting Bulgaria in a good light here. No reasonable person would think its legitimate to get a bus to another country, sign up for welfare, and get the bus home again. Those Bulgarians are not idiots, they are willing participants in a scam.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Presumably they are targetting the poorest and most desperate Bulgarians, so I'm not sure why this reflects badly on Bulgaria? Do we blame the whole country when someone gets caught as a drug mule? Or do we reflect that they are many ways a victim of the crime?
- yolo3000 4y ago
  Not from Bulgaria, but why do you generalise? Do you realise that a country has people from all walks of life, from simple farmers to distinguished scientists, explorers, people of culture, people who have done and will do remarkable things. Do you think the dutch are better than the bulgarians? People should not even think in these terms.
  - throwaway8689 4y ago
    I replied to a comment specifically about Bulgaria and Nederlands. Had it been the other way around, I would have reversed the labels. "People should not even think in these terms." Thanks for telling us all how we are allowed to think.
    - yolo3000 4y ago

maxboone 4y ago

Even though it's very appealing to think we didn't do wrong here and the blame is with the fraudsters, this take is too apologetic towards the government and too harsh towards the folks who got their kids taken away. Personally, I blame a longer standing issue of politics designing laws that can not be executed as intended, instead of racism. However, these politics hit minority groups as these are most affected by such legislation. I do believe racism did seriously accelerate the issues here. In the EU, we have a weberian bureaucracy, this basically compiles to that the institutions such as the belastingdienst will get legislation and execute it as "efficiently" as possible. However, in recent (±15-20y) politics it is expected that the institutions will actually think / care / morally judge the tasks they are supposed to execute. That just doesn't work, period. A system such as that is implemented in the US, where a change of political party means the replacement of the bureaucracy / government staffing. Either we: 1. Start politicizing our institutions and stop asking the bureaucracy to do task X as efficiently as possible. Or, 2. We make sure that the laws are not written with just the intention in mind, but executionability (and what-if-applied-to-the-extreme) as well. Unfortunately I don't really see any party talking about institutional change at the moment for the new elections, it's mostly clout chasing in their programmes. That said, the election is for the PS.

throwaway8689 4y ago
Service is 503 right now. How did fraud escalate to kids being taken away?
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  Its not uncommon: if parents are charged (not even convicted) with fraud, or other criminal offenses, the social services automatically start to become involved - and often will default to "doing something" to "protect" the child from its "criminal parents". Its a problem of incentives and metrics for the social service caseworkers - if they do not act, and "something happens", they get the book thrown at them. If they do act, and there was no risk, well it was better to be "safe" than "sorry" right? Basically there's zero negative outcome for the case worker or social service system when they break up a family or take a child into care. There are negative outcomes if they fail to do so.

belter 4y ago

Amazing how you managed to try to mitigate the actions, of a Tax Office, even the Dutch Minister of Finance admitted is institutionally racist. "Van Rij admits institutional racism is a problem at Dutch tax office" - https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/05/van-rij-admits-institutional-racism-is-a-problem-at-dutch-tax-office/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/05/van-rij-admits-institu...

ArnoVW 4y ago

1) if new rules state that you can get paid for taking care of someone, then asking for that money is not fraud. You are due that money, by law. This was pointed out when the law was being discussed at the time in parliament. 2) if your supplier has it's admin not in shape (or is comitting fraud), then you are not a fraudster. 3) yes, the law mandated them to track fraud. It also mandates not labelling innocent people as fraudsters. 4) the awesome power of the state comes with great responsibilities. After 3 years of newspaper articles and commissions and debate, it is clear that that bar was not met. The crux of this issue is the fact that, yes, the state uses heuristics to operate efficiently. And courts have ruled that the state is allowed to do this. The border patrol frisks certain people more often. The tax authorities control self-employed people more often. That's not cool if you are one of those groups, and we would all do well to empathise with them. But as a society we have not found a better solution. The alternative is frisking everyone or having some sort of panopticon, which is not great neither. The real problem arises when the heuristic becomes a hard rule. And when the heuristic does not lead to an indicator "to be investigated in a neutral way", but to "likely fraudster, interpret anything you find as fraud" or even "known fraudster". Just because there is a statistical correlation doesn't mean that it's always true. This is where the tax authorities went wrong. And this is why they are now compensating people.

em500 4y ago
2) if your supplier has it's admin not in shape (or is comitting fraud), then you are not a fraudster.innocent people as fraudsters. In this particular case, the law is written that the liability lies solely with the people applying for the subsidy (which are the parents, they need to register how many hours they wish to apply for, not the daycare providers). Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

em500 4y ago

> The fraud revolves around small companies ("gastouder kantoren") thinking they found a loop hole in the law. The short version is they would say: "Hey, do your (grand parents) sometimes baby sit your kids? We'll register them as a 'gastouder' company and now the government will pay for the childcare.". The problem was that these "companies" didn't have things like a proper administration which was required to get the government money. The "gastouder kantoreren" would them make up some fictional administration and get caught. People might not realize how lucrative this construction was (and still is, AFAIK it still works if you do all your admin correctly). Just like in the rest of the world, it's not uncommon in the Netherlands for grandparents or unemployed relatives to provide daycare for free. But if they register as an official 'gastouder' (guest parent), they can get about €1400/child/month in child care subsidy if the parent(s) are on minimum wage. For context, minimum full time wage is around €1900/month, and 'AOW' (social security for retirees) about €1300/month. Median income in the country is below €3000/worker/month, so grandparents taking care of 2 grandchildren taking the full subsidy would bump them comfortably into the upper half of income earners (all amounts after-tax).

avar 4y ago
Yes it's "lucrative", and there's certainly fraud involved. But the tone of comment (and certainly the rest of this thread at large) seems to be losing sight of how lucrative it is for everyone involved. If you have a child in The Netherlands you're entitled to a daycare subsidy. The subsidy is the same whether you send your kid to the daycare down the road, or if you pay a "gastouder kantoren". It should be obvious how the likely signs of "fraud" in this case are highly correlated with saving the state money overall. If you're paying one of your parents to take care of your kids that's usually win-win, if they weren't getting that income they might in turn be eligible for other poverty subsidies from the state. The overhead of paying a "real" daycare is also going to be much higher in administrative overhead etc. The average daycare worker is also likely to be of an age and inclination (given that they've accepted a job taking care of the kids of strangers) to be otherwise productive elsewhere in the economy, which is less likely to be the case with parents willing to act as a "gastouder kantoren". So cracking down on this in particular seems to me to be at least partially a case of penny wise pound foolish, which the Dutch are otherwise pretty good about avoiding. This system can absorb a lot of fraud before it would become less beneficial overall than the alternative.

moss2 4y ago

> A lot of people commited fraud. Therefore, it was right of the Dutch government to separate 1100 children from their families. Wtf?