Dutch Revenue Service pays € 45 Mln into wrong bank accounts
Last year, the Dutch revenue services paid some €45 Million in allowances into wrong bank accounts. A government official said the allowances would be claimed back, but there were no guarantees that the entire amount could be reclaimed. It seems the Government will not perform a name/account number check, “as this would slow down payments”.
It has to be said, though, that their performance is improving. Last year there were 19,000 wrong payments, in 2007 the number was 25,000, which amounts to a paltry 0.014% and 0.019% of the total number of payment done.
So this probably means that the revenue service does not check whether the account number you provide for returns and allowances is actually yours.
Is this an IQ train wreck? Given the amount (45 million euro’s in 2008 and probably around 60 million euro’s in 2007) I would say it is. Instituting a name/account number check would probably cost just a fraction of these amounts. it also goes to show that even a tiny amount of errors can cost you huge amounts of money.
