Sometimes I get money questions from readers who are well informed, but still get stuck. They are – as one of them eloquently puts it – ‘not quite a stranger in financial Jerusalem’. They often help others fill in the tax return. In this case, it concerns the declaration of retired couples, one of whom has moved to a nursing home. Due to opposition from the tax authorities, they miss out on hundreds of euros in tax credit.
The partners now live separately from each other and can then apply for a single state pension. This yields both more than 5,000 euros more per year, but as a result the partner in the nursing home has to pay much more personal contribution. In that case, it is often better to choose to stick to the lower AOW for married people.
If you live alone as an AOW pension, you are automatically entitled to the single elderly person’s tax credit of 443 euros. As a result, you pay 443 euros less in taxes. Even if you still receive the AOW for married people, you can still apply for that discount. You retain your right to AOW for single people, even if you do not apply for it.
Anyone who completes the tax return correctly and applies for the single-elderly tax credit will nevertheless receive a rejection letter from the tax authorities. After all, there would be no right to a single-elderly tax credit if the taxpayer receives AOW for married people. You have to object and then you will still be awarded the 443 euros.
The Tax and Customs Administration should know better, but it always gets it wrong. The computer does that. You can see this in the rejection letter signed by the inspector JM Melsen, Tax Authorities/Central Administrative Processes. This Melsen is actually the general director of the ‘Central administrative processes’ (CAP) department, which takes care of the automated traffic with citizens. CAP’s mission is to ‘make massively personal’. This is done, among other things, by pretending that Melsen is a tax inspector. Unfortunately, you can’t tell ‘Melsen’ what’s going wrong so that he learns from it. You have to reprogram it.
There is a website, Belastingdienst.nl/kennisnetwerk where helpful citizens can share their experiences and raise issues. Anyone can log in there with their DigiD. The issue of the single-elderly discount on that website’s forum was raised again two weeks ago. Pieter Schakel is one of the usually anonymous helpers who calls on the Tax Authorities to do something about this. Schakel is an experience expert with himself a partner in a nursing home. In addition, as a volunteer for the ANBO, he helps hundreds of taxpayers every year. He says he has already helped twenty times with drafting a notice of objection to enforce the single-elderly tax credit. Can’t even intervene, he asks desperately.
He has my support. And who struggles with this: Schakel publishes a model objection on that forum. If you can’t find it, you can contact me at the email address below. Then I send the text.
Reinout van der Heijden is editor-in-chief of the Geldgids
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