Thousands of parents who were wrongly accused of defrauding the childcare benefits system have been plunged into fresh financial turmoil after they were sent letters telling them to repay their frozen debts to the government.

Around 100,000 victims of the so-called childcare benefits scandal, or toeslagenaffaire, applied to have their repayments put on hold in 2021, after the Dutch tax office’s excessive enforcement of anti-fraud measures first came to light.

One-third of those who made use of the option owed more than €5,000 or more in unpaid taxes or reclaimed allowances. The debts were not written off and have increased in the meantime as a result of interest payments.

The repayments scandal prompted the resignation of Mark Rutte’s third cabinet in 2021, after tax officials were found to have branded working families as fraudsters if they made minor errors in their paperwork.

Some victims were left financially ruined after they were ordered to pay back tens of thousands of euros in childcare costs to the state, with no recourse to debt relief.

A parliamentary inquiry concluded they had suffered an “unprecedented injustice” and victims were subsequently promised a flat compensation payment of €30,000 to settle their claims.

Pandemic and delay

Affected families were given the option of freezing their repayments, initially for a year, but the pandemic and delays to the compensation scheme meant the government did not start reclaiming debts until last year.

The finance ministry said it had kept people informed through its website and in individual phone calls about how much they had to repay, and that the majority of people whose repayments were put on hold had already paid off the debt.

But others said they had received no forewarning that their debts were about to be unfrozen.

One victim, Helga de Vente, told NOS: “I got a letter in October saying: ‘Your pause has been ended’. It gave me a few weeks to pay all my outstanding debts in one go. I was hugely shocked.”

Faith Bruyning, who sat for two years as an MP for centre-right party NSC – whose leader, Pieter Omtzigt, was instrumental in exposing the scandal – said: “We didn’t think about these debts because we’ve had five years of radio silence.”

Pauline Ros, a lawyer who represents dozens of families, told NOS that the arrival of letters in blue tax office envelopes triggered “panic” for some of her clients.

Ros said her clients had been told they could apply for debt repayment plans or ask to have them written off. “But because the rules are so strict they are facing enormous stress again,” she said.

“My clients understand that they’ll have to pay this money back and they want to, so I hope we can find a solution.”