Dutch childcare benefits scandal

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (December 2021)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Dutch. (December 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Dutch Wikipedia article at [[:nl:Toeslagenaffaire]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|nl|Toeslagenaffaire}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

The Dutch childcare benefits scandal (Dutch: kinderopvangtoeslagaffaire or toeslagenaffaire, lit. '[childcare] benefits affair') refers to a political scandal in the Netherlands involving false allegations of welfare fraud by the Tax and Customs Administration (Belastingdienst) against thousands of families claiming childcare benefits.^[1][2]

Between 2005 and 2019, approximately 26,000 parents were wrongly accused of making fraudulent benefit claims, resulting in demands to repay their received allowances in full.^[1][3] In many cases, this sum amounted to tens of thousands of euros, driving families into severe financial hardship.^[1][2]

The scandal gained public attention in September 2018, prompting investigations that criticized the Tax and Customs Administration's procedures as discriminatory, particularly affecting parents with foreign backgrounds and characterized by institutional biases.^[4][5] The severity of the issue culminated in the resignation of the third Rutte cabinet on 15 January 2021, just two months before the scheduled 2021 general election. A parliamentary inquiry into the affair concluded that it violated fundamental principles of the rule of law.^[1][2][6]