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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Algorithm is too much of a term to use here. They simply labelled everybody with a foreign (read: Islamic, Polish or Bulgarian) sounding name and/or an immigration background (including war refugees!) as a potential fraud case in response to some very limited actual fraud that exposed the tax office as being pretty bad at uncovering some (obvious) fraud cases.

Long story short, this article contains some grains of truth but 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.

The most ugly bit: the government that was in charge during all this fell due to the scandal and then was promptly re-elected claiming that they have full mandate to pursue their various un-ethical goals.

Families broke apart over this, children (1100!) got placed out of their parent's homes (because having your parents labelled fraudsters gives extraordinary powers to the government to really mess up your life as if it wasn't enough yet). A number of people committed suicide, one of which was directly traced back to the scandal.

If not for a single lawyer (González Pérez) persisting this whole thing would have never been brought to light. More than the algorithm I would blame the people who willingly implemented all of this. FWIW this is still unresolved, very few people (if any) have had any kind of compensation and the government is dragging its heels every step of the way.

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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 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.

> 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.

> 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...

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.

> 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... (see FAQ - "Why do I need personal liability insurance" at bottom of page)

You are right! I've edited the comment (and marked it clearly as an edit). Though it should be noted that 92% of the people in the Netherlands have such an insurance [1].

[1] https://www.consumentenbond.nl/aansprakelijkheidsverzekering...

> a bunch of idiotic legislation that made it illegal for people to arrange for their own child minding services in case both parents worked.

This is incorrect. It is only required if you want subsidy.

Which nearly everyone wants, since the daycare cost for two kids can easily be an average salary.

> since the daycare cost for two kids can easily be an average salary

Not if your parents baby-sit your kids. And that's the scenario where this is all about. People were already bringing their kids to their parents and then someone said: "We found a loophole how you can get free money for your baby-sitting parent who aren't getting paid. We'll just pretend they get paid.".

I dont know of anyone having their parents babysit 5 days a week, but OK, you're not supposed to do that for one day either. How does that even work though, you need to provide a document from a registered daycare showing the number of days a week you're buying. Parents obviously can't provide this document.

> because of a bunch of idiotic legislation

Your wording makes it quite clear that you have an agenda. I guess your argument would be more believable if you did not use wording like this, just as a hint for future arguments. Besides, not everything possible is also a good idea, that something modern citizens seem to forget.

> > because of a bunch of idiotic legislation

> Your wording makes it quite clear that you have an agenda.

What agenda would this be exactly, anti-idiocy?

More like anti-government and pro-foreigner-can-do-whatever-they-want.

if only there was a way to not even expose yourself to fraud, foreigners OR non-foreigners. If only there was some kind of way we could protect ourselves and society from having our money be stolen by a central body and given out not in accordance with the rules the central body has stated, but is so obviously poor at enforcing properly.

I dont quite see how it would work, but imagine if somehow it could be that I as a parent would simply arrange to pay for childcare services myself, instead of having someone steal my money with the threat of being put in prison, and then petition them to pay a childcare service I have identified.

I cant quite figure out how it could work myself, as this middleman is obviously performing a service that I would never be able to do myself, but maybe smarter heads than mine could prevail, and come up with a societal structure where I can somehow just go pay my nanny, instead of having someone else do it with money they took from me.

If only the world were as simple as it used to be. During my childhood, nobody pays anyone anything for childcare. Lo and behold, my MOTHER did the childcare thing! And the rest was done at school. Interesting past times those are!

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.

I can assure you 100% that having inefficient public services and institutions is not the solution for these cases, in my home country of Portugal we are very good at having slow and inefficient public services but outcomes are not much better.

Also your number 2 is "people should predict the bad outcomes of the laws they write", which just sounds like "get good" but for lawmakers.

the slower they are, the less people they can hurt. The absolute best thing any government can do for their people is to go on an all expenses paid vacation to fiji, and stay there FOREVER.

would suck for fiji, but be a new utopian era of prosperity here

Service is 503 right now. How did fraud escalate to kids being taken away?

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.

It largely didn't, despite the huge media outcry here that tries to make it seem as if children were taken away because their parents committed fraud. It's simply that there is large covariance between people being poor (and/or having other markers that make them susceptible to being swept up in this sometimes overzealous enforcement of the law) and being unfit parents in other ways (being unable to provide a roof over children's heads, unsafe/violent living conditions etc.) This angle is taboo though to the point where recording data that could show this relationship is forbidden by child protection authorities.

There probably are/were cases where the clawing back of previously paid out benefits pushed parents into territory where the circumstances for having their children taken away could develop. However there is little reason to suspect that out of all those who were involved in this and had their children taken away, had those children taken away because of that involvement - i.e. the '1100' number mentioned above.

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).

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.

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.

I was also contacted multiple times by people who can help fill in the WBSO forms. It is not that hard to do it yourself.

A recent one is the STAP budget where every citizen can get 1000,- for education and millions went to get rich quick courses run by shady influencers.

Offer free money, people will abuse it, but if you crack down on fraudsters you will probably destroy some innocent people in the process.

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.

Their IT are broadly inept (it's a cultural thing) and totally incapable of doing it.

And the status quo of keeping it inept benefits exactly one side.

> Taxes are very hard for non-natives

Oh, taxes are very hard for natives as well. The whole tax system doesn't make any sense at all and several elected governments have promised to make it simpler for a long time now.

As a highly intelligent and presumably high earning person, why not hire someone else to do your taxes?

It's not about me - I hired an accountant, notaris etc, the same way I was able to invest in learning the language quickly. And had everything they did double-checked. It's about the vast majority who aren't that lucky.

Especially in the context: to own a house in NL most people need two salaries. Childcare was up until about 2010 easily accessible and affordable to everyone. That was all removed as a cost cutting measure, which is why we had stupid systems like this.

How do you trust the people you hire aren’t going to break the law and get you in jail? Isn’t what these people did?

The same way as in every country. Professional certifications aren't just barriers of entry to a profession, they entail a particular responsibility. Otherwise you could just hire a fall guy to get away with fraud.

Okay so based on this thread we have poor immigrants being taken advantage of by shitty fraudster financial advice and the Dutch government in response takes away children and drives a few poor immigrants to suicide?? That seems so disproportionate?

If they fuck it up, the buck still stops with you.

Many tax advisors also are dodgy as all fuck.

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...

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.

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.

The net median income in The Netherlands is around 6.5x of that in Bulgaria[1], or €2,834 for .nl, €389 for .bg. If we extrapolate that in reverse it would be like .nl having a median monthly net of around €16k, or a yearly of just under €200k.

As a non-Dutchie living in The Netherlands, I don't think the Dutch are inherently are better than Bulgarians.

I'd bet good money that if there was another EU country with a similar social safety net where the median salary was €200k (with correspondingly generous welfare) that a certain segment of the Dutch population would be flocking to it to defraud that government.

I don't understand why it's controversial to point out those basic realities among countries in the EEA. Nobody's claiming that there's a unique genetic link between Bulgarians and fraud, just that the economic incentives involved are all going one way.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

No one here was pointing out the basic realities, he was saying that because some people in Bulgaria did some form of fraud, it paints Bulgaria in a bad light. Why? What's the relation between Bulgarians who do fraud, from the ones who don't. Anyway, have a good day

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.

You can be a bigot if you want, I was just saying that in general people should not be.

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?

> 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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Wtf?

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-institu...

By far the bigger problem is that once you got labelled as "fraudulent" it was nigh-impossible to prove your innocence, no matter what kind of proof you provided, that people were marked as "fraudulent" over simple banal mistakes or misunderstandings, and that people's benefits were not only stopped, they also had to return all previous benefits, often with a fine added.

All of that was made worse by the reluctance to admit there was a structural problem at all for years. That was the second-biggest problem.

Everything else are also problems, but this is really the root of the problem. It's worth pointing out that people with immigration backgrounds were far from the only victims, unlike your comment suggests (possession of dual nationality was the biggest "risk marker" they used AFAIK, not name, and it's not entirely clear just how biased the results were because people with migration backgrounds are also overrepresented as receivers of benefits).

In short, it would still have been an enormous scandal even without any ethnic profiling. That is not to say that ethnic profiling wasn't a problem, just the lesser one out of several.

> FWIW this is still unresolved, very few people have had any kind of compensation and the government is dragging its heels every step of the way.

This is genuinely a difficult problem. 1,379 people are involved full-time just for the compensation[1] There's even been criticism it's too easy to get compensation, even if you weren't a victim (see e.g. [2]).

Should it be faster? Yes. But it's hard to see how that would be realistically possible. I certainly don't think that the government has been "dragging its heels every step of the way" for the last 2 years.

[1]: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/binaries/rijksoverheid/document... page 43

[1]: https://decorrespondent.nl/13592/na-de-toeslagenaffaire-is-n...

> people were marked as "fraudulent" over simple banal mistakes or misunderstandings, and that people's benefits were not only stopped, they also had to return all previous benefits, often with a fine added

Those who are fortunate enough not to rely on benefits may not realize it, but if you look at the amount of bureaucracy surrounding benefits, it becomes clear that this problem permeates the entire system.

If you rely on benefits, you are treated with suspicion by default (by design).

Exactly. The whole system is rigged against you to the point that people that can avoid the bureaucracy will do so because they are well aware that even the slightest mistake can have huge consequences, and as a result many people that have right to this kind of assistance will forego it. So on paper people have rights and all kinds of assistance, in practice they may well shy away from it because they are too scared, and those tend to be the people that need it most (I'm personally aware of several such cases).

The same with 'kinderbijslag', 'zorgtoeslag' and lots of other of these social catchnet essentials. They're made into a massive meatgrinder and one little mistake and you'll be paying back the original assistance + some contrived fine, possibly much higher than the original amount you received.

> The same with 'kinderbijslag', 'zorgtoeslag' and lots of other of these social catchnet essentials. They're made into a massive meatgrinder and one little mistake and you'll be paying back the original assistance + some contrived fine, possibly much higher than the original amount you received.

There is quite some administration around applying for welfare ('bijstand') and also around daycare subsidy (mostly because it requires correct hours registration, and parents tend to change the hours quite a bit due to holidays, sickness, etc). But the administration around specifically 'kinderbijslag' (child benefits), 'zorgtoeslag' (health care subsidy) and 'huurtoeslag' (rent subsidy) are minimal to almost non-existent.

> But the administration around specifically 'kinderbijslag' (child benefits), 'zorgtoeslag' (health care subsidy) and 'huurtoeslag' (rent subsidy) are minimal to almost non-existent.

I disagree. The ‘toeslagen’ system is specifically set up such that if you start earning more partway through the year, you might have to pay months of benefits payments back (since those payments were really just a ‘voorschot’, and your actual right to them is based on your annual salary, which changes if you get a better job).

If you forget to update your salary (which might happen to ordinary people for any number of reasons), you might additionally be slapped with a fine.

I understand that on HN, we are self-selecting for people who understand the rules and how the system works. In real life, though, many people (especially those with a low income) are not well-versed in bureaucratic rules.

Consider, for example, that 1 in 9 (!) Dutch are functionally illiterate (laaggeletterd) [1]. The system is just too complex for them, and it’s no wonder many choose to forgo toeslagen when they do have a right to them.

[1] https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/laaggeletterdheid

About ten years ago one of my Somali neighbours (refugee) would literally ask random people on the street to help him understand government letters; he'd just talk to people passing by. He spoke some Dutch and some English, but neither very well. I told him he can just ring my door but he never did.

That said, for health care and rent it's not that hard, or at least it wasn't when I was eligible for it >10 years ago. For most regular people with a labour contract the tax service already has all your details and you don't really need to do anything. They also do try to use simple and plain language when possible (I remember that specifically as I felt it was too simple at times).

Child care seems different, which is why the entire scandal is mostly about that; I have no experience with that. And maybe the rent/health benefits changed in the meanwhile. The biggest caveat is that you may have to return the money if you earned too much as you mentioned (which also happened to me because I worked slightly too much overtime; I would have been better off not getting paid for that :-/).

Thank you for your comments in this thread. The disconnect between theory and practice in these threads (and others) where it concerns people a little lower on the earnings and education totem pole is quite shocking. It's almost as if people on HN as a rule are isolated from the real world to an extent that they come off as utterly devoid of empathy with those that aren't earning as much money and who did not have the same degree of education as they themselves do.

I grew up in the Netherlands as a "niet-Westers allochtoon", with 2 (not "functionally" but utterly) illiterate parents. I have spent significant shares of my life in both the bottom and top quintiles of the income distribution, and I still have friends in both segments today (including one who is currently waiting for compensation in the Toeslagenaffaire). I think I can claim a broader perspective on this issue than most posters here.

In some countries, there are social services (gov't or non-profit) that will assist people to apply for these programmes correctly. Does the same exist in Nederlands for these essential social benefits?

My point: A lot of these benefits help children (directly or indirectly), who, in my humble opinion, deserve extra-special treatment, as they do not control their financial circumstances.

Parent's point are highly exaggerated, see my sibling comment. For children born in the Netherlands to parents with a valid resident permit, there is close to zero administration involved. (I can go into exact details if interested.)

It's of course more difficult for the newly immigrated and the undocumented, but that's the case in practically every country in the world and the Netherlands is probably not any worse than other developed countries in that regard.

Thank you to clarify. These types of comments are important to provide much needed nuance.

Just one small problem: the comment is wrong in important ways and shows a fair amount of disconnect between their knowledge of these systems and the practical implications.

For one example: a child living abroad with one parent whilst the other half is living in the Netherlands has theoretically as much right to that support as one living in NL, but in practice the hoops they have to jump through + the risk of having to pay back the money increased with some arbitrary (but substantial) fine is so large that many people in that situation end up foregoing the aid.

It all works well when you are on the happy path, but if you are even a little bit outside of the 70% case ('normal') then the system will work against you in all kinds of unpredictable ways. And some of those ways would have you labeled a fraudster, even if you do your utmost to play by the rules. And finally: the government itself doesn't know what the rules really are so if you call one of their hotlines you may well get faulty advice that will eventually cause you to be labeled a fraudster.

>Those who are fortunate enough not to rely on benefits may not realize it, but if you look at the amount of bureaucracy surrounding benefits, it becomes clear that this problem permeates the entire system.

If you rely on benefits, you are treated with suspicion by default (by design).

Exactly, and that is why I'll always bring up the only example of a benefit system that doesn't suffer all those beaurocratic nightmares. Polish child support (so called 500+) is a benefit for everyone that has a child(or children). It is 500pln (a it over 100eur) per child per month. It has been genius to give it to everyone. Minimal beaurocraticy was required as the state already has a record of children and parents. Fraud is minimal and it eradicated child poverty in few months.

There are still a lot of people hurt very deeply that "rich people get it too". Most people don't care, and it's goals are accomplished regardless. The cost is comparable with similar income-weighted benefits in other countries.

Edit:To clarify. Isn't current Polish gov right wing? Such things only happen in PL :-) That a right wing gov. brings a new benefit and the left is up in arms (because it has no income applicability). Now 8 years later the left has kind of accepted it was a good idea, but in the beginning they were very much against it.

> Exactly, and that is why I'll always bring up the only example of a benefit system that doesn't suffer all those beaurocratic nightmares. Polish child support (so called 500+) is a benefit for everyone that has a child(or children). It is 500pln (a it over 100eur) per child per month. It has been genius to give it to everyone. Minimal beaurocraticy was required as the state already has a record of children and parents. Fraud is minimal and it eradicated child poverty in few months.

This is also true for the 'kinderbijslag' in the Netherlands, the parents post about this is simply untrue. The vast majority of parents get it automatically in their bank account without any administration beyond establishing that you're a parent with valid resident permit and children and your bank account. There is of course extra work if you don't reside in the country or your child was born elsewhere / recently immigrated, but I can't imagine that that's much different in Poland.

> There are still a lot of people hurt very deeply that "rich people get it too"

This is the difference between a social insurance system and benefits. The former is much easier to reason about, and therefore can have simpler rules.

Nobody complains that "rich people gets pensions too" because of course they do. They pay taxes like everyone else.

This is well proven, and perhaps most well known, in the Nordic countries. When people treat certain measures as rights and not handouts, couples can plan their lives accordingly and manage both qualified educations and children.

> Edit:To clarify. Isn't current Polish gov right wing? Such things only happen in PL :-) That a right wing gov. brings a new benefit and the left is up in arms (because it has no income applicability). Now 8 years later the left has kind of accepted it was a good idea, but in the beginning they were very much against it.

This is why left/right wing don't always make sense in today's political climate. A radar/pizza chart (with the different categories - economic, social, ecological, etc.) is more appropriate than a slider but that doesn't provide for easy labels. A party can be right-wing, but pro-green stuff (renewables, decarbonisation, etc.) which isn't usually associated with right-wing politics. And of course populism makes it so that any party can implement policies which are widely accepted (such as giving money for children) regardless of (nominal) party colours.

Fair enough, it's complex but let's face it: this was just a very nice excuse for a lot of people in government service to go after all those that either have a skin color that isn't perfectly white and/or that came from abroad. Xenophobia at its finest and deeply embedded in the government machinery to the point that it has - to this day - not been eradicated. Even now there are people here claiming that 'the bulk of those 30,000 must have done something wrong otherwise why did they end up in the database' and other such gems.

The criticism that it is too easy to get compensation is ridiculous, the compensation has two components, one to level any financial damage done in the past, the other because people were simply the victim of profiling, which the government isn't supposed to engage in to begin with.

Ethnic profiling was the problem, the root cause of the problem and continues to be the problem (the whole thing was triggered by the so called 'Bulgarenfraude'), there are also victims without an immigration background but those are by far in the minority and tend to be better represented with regards to the redress process than those that have other non-Dutch backgrounds.

Without the ethnic profiling we'd be looking at a small fraction of the number of people affected.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2434452-meeste-toeslagenouders-hebben...

Gives a really good overview in a small and simple table, the discrepancy between the chances of being marked as fraudulent based on ethnic background is off the scale and can not simply be waved away as not being the factor here, 70% of those affected has a migrant background and yet they only make up roughly 1/4th of Dutch society. It would take an extraordinary set of facts to explain this away and no satisfactory explanation has been given to date.

It's not that straight-forward, since people with a migration background tend to have lower incomes on average, and are more likely to receive benefits. See e.g. [1].

I don't doubt that it is unfairly biased, given that nationality was one of several "risk factors", but it's not entirely clear how unfairly biased it is. That table from the NOS is certainly not the full picture.

It's hard to tell what would have happened without any ethnic profiling. Maybe the group would be smaller, maybe not. Even if we accept the 70% figure at face value (which we shouldn't) and subtract all of those (which we also shouldn't) that still leaves us with ~7,800 ethnic Dutch victims (instead of ~26,000). Realistically, I think "at least 10,000" would be a reasonable conservative estimate. It's less than 26,000, but still a lot and very significant.

The way I see it, it boils down to:

1. There is no ethnic profiling; people still get trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare (possibly fewer than with ethnic profiling).

2. There is ethnic profiling; certain people get investigated more frequently, but people are treated fairly.

Both situations are highly undesirable, but situation 2 seems significantly better.

I agree that ethnic profiling was one of the sins here, but everything considered it wasn't the sin that led to the greatest amount of problems for the victims. I think it's a mistake to focus mainly on this aspect.

> Even now there are people here claiming that 'the bulk of those 30,000 must have done something wrong otherwise why did they end up in the database' and other such gems.

I can't recall ever seeing such comments, although I don't doubt they exist it seems a fringe opinion.

[1]: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/rammelende-data...

> It's hard to tell what would have happened without any ethnic profiling.

For starters the numbers would be much, much lower and the balance would reflect dutch society instead of this weird make-up.

> Even if we accept the 70% figure at face value (which we shouldn't) and subtract all of those (which we also shouldn't)

Well, you should: this was fairly extensively reported and if it were wrong I'm pretty sure it would have been seized upon immediately.

> that still leaves us with ~7,800 ethnic Dutch victims (instead of ~26,000).

There are no figures about the actual fraud but there is a good argument to be made that given the lopsided distribution the actual fraud percentages amongst the various people represented in the register does not reflect reality. If proven this would really put the lie to this system: the profiling not only accused a lot of people wrongly, and caused them immense grief and damage it also caused a lot of manpower to be wasted that should have gone to other cases of actual fraud.

The Dutch AP (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) is pretty clear in their findings:

https://www.autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/sites/default/file...

> I can't recall ever seeing such comments, although I don't doubt they exist it seems a fringe opinion.

Have a look at the comment threads in Dutch media, underneath just about every article you will find these. Definitely not a fringe, unless you count double digits as fringe.

> For starters the numbers would be much, much lower and the balance would reflect dutch society instead of this weird make-up

You seem to have completely ignored the parent's comment about how those immigrants are poorer and thus more likely to receive benefits. This is bad for being convincing.

> The Dutch AP (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) is pretty clear in their findings

The Volkskrant article I posted in my previous comment specifically addresses the figures in that report. The figure are not wrong, it's just more complex when you factor in everything.

> Have a look at the comment threads in Dutch media, underneath just about every article you will find these. Definitely not a fringe, unless you count double digits as fringe.

I consider those "fringe". I stopped engaging a long time ago as it's boring and pointless; I wrote about this some years ago [1] (the local newspaper being Eindhovens Dagblag):

> I stopped engaging on my local newspaper’s website years ago because the same small super-active group kept ranting about “the Muslims” on what felt like every fucking story, even when it had nothing to do immigration or religion. I engaged in good faith at first, but it got very tiresome very fast. For these people, everything seems to be about the Muslims, and there seems little interest to engage in constructive discussion. So at some point I just gave up. I’m almost certainly not the only one.

I think you need to be very careful going on random internet comments to see if something is fringe or wide-spread.

With a population of ~18 million people even just 0.1% is still ~18,000 people, and if this small group is very active and motivated they can appear a lot larger than they are – even more so if their nonsense drives out people who get tired of them.

[1]: https://www.arp242.net/censorship.html

> let's face it: this was just a very nice excuse for a lot of people in government service to go after all those that either have a skin color that isn't perfectly white

FYI: This paranoid conspiratorial thinking is making it really hard to take the rest of what you say seriously. If you want to be convincing you should probably leave it out and focus on things you can prove.

> 70% of those affected has a migrant background and yet they only make up roughly 1/4th of Dutch society

You can't just compare the victims against 'Dutch society'. Not all of Dutch society has kids, and uses daycare, and applies for benefits etc. To make a sensible comparison to find out the amount of ethnic profiling that was used, you should compare the ethnicity of the victim group against the total group of Dutch society that:

- used daycare, and in particular the 'gastouderopvang' that were under suspicion by the BD, and

- applied for benefits (kinderopvangtoeslag)

    > By far the bigger problem is that once you got labelled as
    > "fraudulent" it was nigh-impossible to prove your innocence,
    > no matter what kind of proof you provided

I, an immigrant to The Netherlands, had a personal run-in with this system at the height of this scandal.

I won't go into all the boring details, but it was basically entirely my own fuck-up. I'd gotten some administrative detail wrong, and was simultaneously in the process of forming a company during that calendar year.

I signed up for a corporate hosting/help service that unbeknownst to me (yeah, I should have read the fine print) started directing all my personal tax office mail to themselves, scanning it, and sending me E-Mail notifications about them. I then proceeded to ignore those for more than 6 months (did I mention that it was my fault?), assuming that since the company wouldn't have any "real" operations until late in the year that I could deal with the paperwork then.

The result of which was that I got some request for clarification related to the childcare benefit, which by the time I found out about it in mid-December had escalated to a hard deadline the coming January 1st, with re-payments for childcare benefits due in installments the coming February, the first of a few payments being €10k.

I'm pretty sure the last of many reminder letters (although I didn't dig it up) had at that point escalated to include some variant of phrases like "in the name of the monarch!" and "pay, or else!".

Long story short (and looking back at my E-Mail records) the government went from being convinced that I was engaged in defrauding it of something like the median Dutch yearly income in child care benefits, to being very understanding of my situation, and helping me to file all the correct paperwork.

I'm not saying that applied to everyone who got tied up in that bureaucratic meat-grinder, and YMMV, but I for one found the whole process very helpful and understanding.

It probably helped that I wasn't engaged in any "real" fraud. The tax office agreed that if I'd submitted the required documentation on time there wouldn't have been any issue.

Even though the fault of being tardy with that was entirely my own they were very understanding, I didn't have to pay a penny to the tax office, and they went above & beyond in helping me resolve the issue.

I'm sure that if I'd have been engaged in "actual" fraud the consequences would have been very different, but I wanted to chime in with an anecdote-of-one that in my case it was surprisingly easy to go from assumed fraudster to the Dutch tax office bending over backwards to help me, and bend its own rules to help me out.

I think the government got reelected because that's what people want. Talk to a sufficient number of dutch people outside randstad and you will hear so many times about how the country is full and how there is no Christmas tree when king has a a speech and how there are too many muslims - these people used to constantly talk about how the benefits are being misused and how immigrants are having kids just to receive money and so on. These people are not that concerned about the whole toeslagenaffaire. They might use it to critize the government but the system worked in their eyes.

Yes, this is a huge factor. Lots of fear of the 'other' here outside of the big cities (and plenty inside them) so going after the refugees and the immigrants is quite popular with a certain demographic.

Fraud is the least of Netherland’s problems: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/03/mob-style-kill...

“While Dutch criminal gangs have been dubbed the “Mocro [Moroccan] Maffia” and ethnic minorities are overrepresented as crime suspects, Statistics Netherlands researchers say racial background is less important than age, education and socioeconomics.”

Sometimes simple people manage to see the obvious things that the intellectuals are purposefully missing: Europe’s brainless migration strategy accepted anyone with a pulse instead of focusing on skilled workers. These poor and uneducated migrants were isolated in ghettos and turned to crime as an escape.

Now Western Europe’s haunted by “clans” and “troubled youths” while many politicians and the media still haven’t found a way to address the problem without - God forbid - appearing racist.

Is it rational of them to go after said demographics? Does the existence of such people in the country worsen or improve their lives?

Acting on demographics based on statistics is called discrimination and it is a crime. Everyone - also members of a demographic that is statistically over-represented in criminal behavior - is innocent, unless proven otherwise, on an individual basis. To put that into perspective: young men are much more likely to commit crimes than any other group. Yet we all agree that we shouldn't discriminate against young men.

> Yet we all agree that we shouldn't discriminate against young men.

This definitely isn't a universal sentiment.

> Acting on demographics based on statistics is called discrimination and it is a crime

Not if the government does it. E.g. the vast majority of Russians would not be spies, but Ukraine still isn't letting Russians into the country.

That's a question not even genuinely smart academic economists (not those who play ecomomist on CNN/Bloomberg) who study such for living can answer, let alone the median citizen. It's like asking if the immigrants / documented, NAFTA or trade with China worsen or improve the lives of American citizens.

Wow, 1100 kidnappings and still re-elected. Bleak!

That's because that number alone is meaningless. Children are placed outside of their family whenever their custodians harm their well-being (with a judge's warrant). This is desirable on the whole.

Of those 1100, a certain percentage would have been placed outside of the custody of their parents with or without this scandal, for just reasons. That's the key here.

There will have been a number of cases where the child's environment would not have changed for the worse, had this affair not happened. Financial troubles tend to exacerbate existing issues. Several of these cases have been reported on in-depth in various (reliable) Dutch media, despite what some people might decry. Those cases are inexcusable, but they do not, according to what is known now at least, form the majority of these 1100 cases, or even a significant part.

Anyone who speaks of '1100 kidnappings' is either naive or pushing some other narrative.

The "bar" for social services to remove a child is extremely low - by design.

There's zero repercussions or compensation if the state wrongly removes your child.

There's a massive shitshow if they fail to remove your child and "something happens".

So the system tends to trend on the side of taking children into care (traumatic for everyone involved) prematurely.

  > There's zero repercussions or compensation if the state wrongly removes your child.

This is horrible and there should be more uproar about it. The lifelong trauma associated with that for the child (and the parents) is immeasurable.

That risk exists, but that's not limited to this specific affair.

Its highly relevant to this affair though.

When you are charged or accused for a crime (say, welfare fraud), social services pretty much always automatically step in if there are children in the household.

Then the "remove child" decision tree really gets going - with social services assuming guilt due to it being their safest option.

> When you are charged or accused for a crime (say, welfare fraud), social services pretty much always automatically step in if there are children in the household.

Excepting incidents, the current state is that there is no direct link between this affair and an increase in children being placed outside of their family¹. That doesn't mean that this affair didn't contribute to some of those cases, but it certainly didn't mean 1100 children were 'kidnapped'.

1: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/maatwerk/2022/48/actualisatie-uithu...

Yes, I still find this absolutely unbelievable. And our PM pretty much pretends that it never happened, and that his re-election absolves him of any and all responsibility.

If that man says "I have no active recollection" one more time

Precisely. Politicians whose memory is faulty should resign and stay resigned.

One reason is media consistently referred to the kidnappings as "the scandal" without explaining much of what actually happened to people (especially on evening news).

Another reason is that the majority of Dutch culture/society treats the state-sponsored "independent" media as a church of truth. The majority doesn't question them and all the media did (on purpose?) by repeatedly talking about "the scandal" superficially is just make people tired of hearing about it without knowing what it's actually about.

I think this lays at the core of why they where re-elected (for the 3rd or 4th time).

Every time shit like this comes around, I am vindicated in my belief that facts and truths are two seemingly identical but actually very different things.

I can very much recommend "On Lying and Politics" by Hannah Arendt if you are interested in an essay on the difference. Well-written and extremely relevant today!

It’s odd that people ignore the far bigger devil problem that the Dutch public, and most western public, are being plundered and defrauded of their money to support the lifestyles of the ruling class and foreigners against their will.

You call it discrimination and I call it theft by the ruling class against its own people to import foreigners that the ruling class can more easily control in order to arrest control away from the native populations that keep insisting on being in control of their own lives.

It is sad that people don’t seem to want to understand that “immigration” is a weapon of abuse by the ruling class to attack and shatter the “will of the people”.

It has really never dawned on anyone that there is something wrong with the situation when the richest and most powerful people … literal lying, murdering, stealing psychopaths … are all cheering on and support “immigration”, as if anything they support will have any kind of positive impact on regular people?

It’s not very sane to believe such lies by abusive psychopaths in the ruling class. The people who start wars, kill millions, and pillage countries … the very same countries they then cheer on “immigration” from … should be trusted on “immigration” any more than they should be trusted???

It is mind boggling to be to what extent people will go to trust their abusers. The same people who are doing this and who are responsible for things like COVID are also the murdering pillagers that destroyed and murdered Iraqis, among all the other death and destruction they reap. Why are people trusting these psychopaths?

Yes, thank you. I read the news here, and it's not all on the algorithm. There was some actual discrimination happening.

Me and my wife were mislabeled as tax fraudsters in this. It was and still is a horrible situation. It is still not resolved. They compensated some, but not all.

"a foreign (read: Islamic, Polish or Bulgarian) sounding name"

That explains a lot for me, because my last name does sound kind of Polish/Bulgarian and at the same time does not, since my family tree has been of Dutch origin at least from the early 1600s!

Thank you for the background :)

It's one of the most gruesome pages in (recent) Dutch history and it is far from over.

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