WILLEMSTAD - Due to the imposition of overdue assessments on taxpayers, the collection file of the tax authorities has grown to an amount of almost six billion guilders in tax and premium debts divided over more than 130,000 Crib (tax) numbers.
This size makes it impossible to effectively collect all debts with the available collection capacity. For these reasons, the tax department sets priorities in the collection of outstanding debts.
In order to reduce the collection file to a manageable level and to offer the tax authorities as a whole the opportunity to work in the current situation, the tax authorities have made an adjustment to the collection policy.
The assessments relating to tax years 2017 and older are no longer actively collected. This emphatically does not mean that the debts have been waived, but that the tax authorities will focus the collection capacity on young assessments with a high recovery probability.
There are three exceptions to this main rule in the collection policy. Assessments for tax years 2017 and older will be collected if they have been imposed as a result of a tax criminal investigation, if the tax liability for the years 2017 and older is one million guilders or more and if the tax authorities have information showing that there are recovery options, or if the tax debt for 2017 and older has already been paid into a third-party account, such as at a civil-law notary.
This policy change also means that objections about tax years 2017 and older will no longer be processed unless the taxpayer indicates an interest in this. In this way, the adjustment of the collection policy also contributes to the reduction of the large stock of objections.