Bank details and criminal tax advisor, Arnold is that you? Of course not, but this lethal combination has become a problem over the years. What is that about?
Bank details and criminal tax advisor
In the old days till roughly ten years ago, the client was informed about a tax refund. The client who worked with the tax advisor on a trusted base, asked the tax advisor to provide the client’s bank details to the tax office.
The thought of providing the private bank details of the tax advisor instead of the clients bank details did not even come up. That changed rapidly when “other tax advisors” did provide their own bank details, and successfully ran away with the money.
Bank details can only be provided by the client
The system has changed that only the client can provide his or her bank details. To be more precise, his or her bank details. The bank details of a bank account in name of the partner are refused.
The client can provide the bank details using the Dutch digital ID system (DigID). For tax payers living in the Netherlands that is a doable process, for tax payers living abroad it is less doable to apply for this DigID.
How to provide bank details to the tax office
A very Dutch page informs you how to provide bank details to the Dutch tax office. Often the client asks us to help figuring out what needs to be done, as they are being send in circles as they do not understand what needs to be done.
We often refer to this website and simple replace foreign bank details for Dutch.
What is a criminal tax advisor?
I would like to address the criminal tax advisor. What is a criminal tax advisor? This can be many. It can be a true criminal tax advisor that has set up an entourage just to get you to pay him the tax you should pay the tax office.
Not knowing Dutch rules and regulations can result in a criminal situation as well. Filing for instance a Value Added Tax (VAT) return incorrect in a manner that no enough VAT is being paid, is addressed by the tax office as money laundering. Not filing a correct tax return can cost you 25% penalty for deliberately filing an incorrect tax return. But if you simply did as you were told by your tax advisor, you could start to think less of this person.
What is not a criminal tax advisor?
A tax advisor with whom you are looking for the possible exceptions in the Dutch rules and regulations does not make this a criminal act. The tax office might think differently, so mind your steps.
Checking the company with whom you work if that is a registered tax advisor, helps a lot. Our profession is not regulated, we try to regulate ourselves. A registered tax advisor needs to keep his or her expertise up to date based on a pointing system.
Tax is exciting
We think tax is exciting. We are excited to inform you we are a registered tax advisor office. Happy to service you within rules and regulations. The outcome of your tax return you might think of a criminal act on its own, but that is a result of the Dutch tax system. That we cannot help, even though we will try our best to avoid such outcome.
