Corrupt officials who leak information have free rein at the tax authorities

In 2022, the Tax Authorities commissioned KPMG to conduct research into the ‘resilience’ of its own organization against criminal infiltration attempts. This happened in response to a number of signals about (possible) corruption within its own ranks.

For example, in 2021 it came to light that two tax employees had sold license plate data for years for a fee. Car license plates can be used, among other things, for liquidations and rip deals in the drug circuit. Top criminal Ridouan Taghi ordered accomplices from prison to retrieve the personal data of prison guards. To do this, they had to contact a contact person at the Tax Authorities. The agency recently fired an employee who passed on information to her criminal brother.

Customer friendliness gets in the way

The Tax Authorities have since taken targeted measures to address integrity problems. Managers and lower-level employees receive additional awareness courses that should make them alert to suspicious behavior by colleagues and attempts by criminals to gather sensitive information. The number of employees who have access to a number of databases is limited.

Nevertheless, protection against corruption is still seriously insufficient, according to the report that State Secretary Marnix van Rij (Fiscal Affairs) made public on Thursday. Political-administrative policy goals such as customer friendliness and efficiency seriously hinder another policy goal, combating corruption.

To work efficiently, it is useful if individual employees have access to personal data from across the country. Otherwise, they have to constantly request information from other departments and regions, which is cumbersome and slows things down. For a citizen or entrepreneur who calls the Tax Line, it is also nice if the operator can answer as many questions as possible himself and does not have to transfer the caller.

Building more walls between data files and giving fewer people access has major disadvantages, but this is an effective means against corruption. KPMG identifies the Tax Telephone as a particularly vulnerable component. Not only because these employees can view a lot of data due to customer friendliness, but also because the telephone operators are poorly screened.

The number of telephone requests for assistance varies greatly throughout the year (there is a peak in the spring due to the tax return season), which means that the Tax Line often works with flexible workers. The turnover of staff at the Tax Telephone is high in any case. The bar for applicants is lower than before because the service would otherwise not be able to recruit enough people, say employees interviewed.

Social media

The Tax Line hires many temporary workers. The service has little insight into the screening of these external parties, KPMG notes. Employees surveyed tell the researchers that this screening often means little: identity papers and diplomas of applicants are sometimes only viewed online, not on paper.

The result is that employees who are vulnerable to corruption, for example because they are frustrated about their career prospects or are experiencing private financial problems, are more likely to remain under the radar. KPMG notes – as did the National Criminal Investigation Department before – that there are more and more active ‘information brokers’ who earn money by collecting specific information on behalf of criminals. They approach vulnerable people within the civil service and try to corrupt them by offering big money for the information they are looking for.

Social media makes looking for weak links a lot easier. A majority of tax professionals surveyed by KPMG told researchers that their colleagues share sensitive private information on social media, which can be misused by such information brokers. The high staff turnover and reduced recruitment requirements make it easy for criminals to ‘parachute’ an infiltrator into the Tax Authorities.

Working from home

KPMG also identifies increased working from home as a corruption risk. Supervision of home workers is minimal. The only limitation for tax employees is that they cannot print at home. But it is impossible to determine which data they request, because most (outdated) software systems of the Tax Authorities do not record this (logging). This means that even in the case of proven corruption, it is often difficult to find out afterwards who leaked the information. In principle, home workers can also let anyone and everyone look at the data files, without their manager noticing.

State Secretary Van Rij promises the House of Representatives to ‘intensify’ anti-corruption policy. He does add that ‘it is unlikely that the Tax Authorities can prevent all cases of corruption and integrity violations’. The service is simply ‘too interesting a target’ for criminals for that, Van Rij believes. Applying the loggingapplications in outdated IT systems is not feasible, according to him. He also points out the ‘dilemma’ that better security inevitably comes at the expense of customer friendliness and efficiency.