Junior finance minister Eric Wiebes has placed the tax office under direct ministerial control and plans to replace the organisation’s board with a senior civil servant reporting directly to him.

The shake-up come a week after Wiebes was heavily criticized for his measures to encourage voluntary redundancy within the tax service, which were seriously oversubscribed. That has led to a €70m shortfall in the budget set aside to pay for the reorganisation.

In a briefing to parliament, Wiebes said the tax service leadership has operated too much as an independent organisation and that there is a culture of keeping problems quiet. In addition, senior officials are poor at communicating and there is ‘too great a reliance on informal contacts within a small group’, Wiebes said.

Wiebes and finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem have set up a special committee to look at decision making within the tax service, which has been told to deliver its recommendations within two months.