In the Netherlands you could be income tax due to the Dutch tax office, but you can also receive a tax refund from the Dutch tax office. Bank account payments from the tax office, how is that done?
How are bank account payments to the Dutch tax office done?
First you need to determine whether the message you received is indeed from the Dutch tax office and not from a fraudulent party that simply wants to steal your money. I am aware of tax payers that have the opinion that the tax office is also stealing, but that is currently beside the point.
On this page:
you see on the far right that the bank account number of the Dutch tax office is NL86INGB0002445588. That is the bank account number for all your payments. If you are asked to pay to a different bank account number and you are in doubt, pay to this bank account number instead. The tax office will be able to process that to the right account.
How are bank account payments from the tax office made to you?
If you purchased a home and you are entitled to a mortgage tax relief, then this tax relief can be paid to you either in a lump sum or in monthly installments. The lump sum is only paid to you after you filed the income tax return for that tax year and payment is therefore in arrears.
The monthly installments are paid up front to you, before the tax year has actually finished. Payments are often done around the middle of the month.
As mentioned already above, there are parties in the world that would like to steal the monthly refund from you and that has happened in the past. Therefore the Dutch tax office has clear instructions for you: If the bank account is not in your name, no refund will be paid to you.
That implies that for bank account payments from the tax office you need to provide a bank account in your name or what is often the case a so called ‘EN OF’ bank account. That is a bank account in both your name and the name of your partner.
How many tax amounts are being paid to you?
The income tax return contains all kind of sources of income. It is possible you are refunded some of the money for more than one reason. However, the refund is caused by one preliminary income tax return, hence one amounts shows as refund. That implies you cannot have this amount split into several parts which are paid into several bank accounts.
Another response we often receive is that people assume that besides the mortgage interest more tax refunds are being paid, hence they want to allocate the mortgage refund to the mortgage bank account and the other refunds to the other bank account. Which is not possible. Besides the technical obstacle it is also very unlikely there is a tax refund besides the mortgage refund. The Dutch employers withheld exactly enough, hence no other refund. If you have multiple employers during a year, you are more likely to pay additional tax, then receive an additional refund.
Orange Tax Services
We process thanks to our partner ExpatMortgages numerous preliminary mortgage refund requests per year. The often asked question is when the money arrives in the bank account. That question is then asked after a period of time which makes clear to us that no bank details were provided to the Dutch tax office. Due to privacy rules the details need to be provided by the tax payer, we cannot do that for the tax payer.
Besides explaining bank account payments from the tax office we cannot stress enough that you should know who is actually asking you to pay tax and check if the bank account you are requested to pay tax to is indeed the bank account of the tax office. Please do not click on any provided links where you can pay with Ideal etc. The Dutch tax office does not use Ideal. That is not the same as the Dutch tax office not being ideal.
