Too late received tax assessment for appeal implies the assessment was received by the tax payer on a date when the time line for appeal has already passed. What to do?
Too late received tax assessment for appeal
Receiving a tax assessment very late or not at all is common practice the last few years. The reason can be many. Regardless, the tax office denies your complaint as you are too late. If you counter that decision, the reply is that the tax office used Postnl, hence the assessment was send correctly.
Mail not received
Not receiving mail is common practice, we suggest to use registered mail for important messages. A big envelop often takes at least a week longer to arrive in our office, then a small envelop. We even receive mail three months later. The claim that Postnl is good enough for the Dutch tax office, is not good enough for us.
There are more aspects that can cause mail not to arrive at your address. Recently we had the case of a liquidated BV company. A liquidated company implies the BV company no longer exists. That is registered with the Chamber of Commerce. The office address of the BV company is no longer used, no longer accessible. Still the tax office kept on sending assessments and reminders to that address.
You emigrated from the Netherlands. Before you emigrated you deregistered at city hall with your new forwarding address details. Still the tax office keeps on sending letters to your old address in the Netherlands, or if you kept owning the property in the Netherlands, to that rented property.
Too late received tax assessment for appeal – court case
A Dutch tax payer was confronted on February 21, 2019 with a message from the collector of the tax office. The message stated that the tax refund was to be compensated with an outstanding 2013 (!) tax assessment. He was told that this assessment had a date of December 20, 2018.
An assessment can be appealed within 6 weeks from the moment the assessment has become known to you. That is not the same as 6 weeks from the date of the assessment.
On May 31, 2019 this Dutch tax payer was still unknown about the assessment, as it never arrived. That day he filed a complaint against the assessment.
The Dutch tax office was keen enough to immediately disregard the complaint, as it was not filed within 6 weeks from December 20, 2018. The first court denied an appeal to the denied complaint for the same reason.
Only the higher court agreed with the Dutch tax payer. This implies the assessment will be made known to this tax payer and then he still had 6 weeks time to make a complaint.
Tax-is-exciting
We think tax-is-exciting, fighting windmills is not. And this Don Quixote feeling is also known to us. We have had a similar case with a 2013 huge assessment popping up in 2019 and you need to move heaven and earth to get it solved.
Or a penalty issued for an ICP obligation that was apparently introduced. That announcement of obligation to file a monthly ICP return was never received. Neither was there any reason a monthly ICP return should be file. A reason is a EUR 50.000 quarterly EU goods turnover in the previous 4 quarters, but the turnover was nil in that period. Fighting this type of non received assessments is what we do. It comes with Don Quixote at your side, could be us.
