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') is a political scandal in the Netherlands concerning false allegations of fraud made by the Tax and Customs Administration (Belastingdienst) while attempting to regulate the distribution of childcare benefits, that led to the collective resignation of the government in early 2021.^[1][2]

Between 2005 and 2019, authorities wrongly accused an estimated 26,000 parents of making fraudulent benefit claims, requiring them to pay back the allowances they had received in their entirety.^[1][3] In many cases, this sum amounted to tens of thousands of euros, driving families into severe financial hardship.^[1][2]

The scandal was brought to public attention in September 2018. Investigators have subsequently described the working procedure of the Tax and Customs Administration as "discriminatory" against parents with foreign backgrounds, as well as filled with "institutional bias".^[4][5] On 15 January 2021, two months before the 2021 general election, the third Rutte cabinet resigned over the scandal following a parliamentary inquiry into the matter, which concluded that "fundamental principles of the rule of law" had been violated.^[1][2][6]