Samenvatting

The cabinet has decided to set up a national inspectorate with the task of supervising the quality and the rule of law of the public services provided by the tax authorities. The reason for this is the persistent problems surrounding the Tax and Customs Administration for years (organization, management, IT, personnel) and more recently the crisis surrounding the supplementary child benefit. The Netherlands is not the first and will soon not be the only country with a special regulator for the tax authorities and which focuses on legal protection of taxpayers and the quality of the service. In this article, we ask ourselves how the institution of the new Dutch inspectorate relates to the situation in various foreign countries and we examine which dilemmas and policy questions these raise. We note that with this new inspection the Netherlands is in tune with the situation in various foreign countries. Regarding the relationship and cooperative relationship with the National Ombudsman, the guarantee of the independent and impartial exercise of inspection supervision and the increasing importance of a Charter of the rights of taxpayers, a few important policy questions remain in a comparative sense.