71–80 of 197 posts
Around here we have a law where any decision taken by the public sector with the help of a computer program must (upon request) be explained in plain language, the calculations detailed step by step. Of course, this indirectly prohibits the use of the kind of programs that seem to have been used in this case, since instead of an algorithm, they use a neural network which is a black box even to his trainer (or archite…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
She was a student at the time she received the letters claiming 'missing information' that led to the (unjust) claim. This does not mean she didn't have a job before that or some other occupation. She was around 30 at that time, and study was just part of her career path. If you have several children, the child care allowance adds up — I receive over €1000 a month for one preschool child. Multiply this for more than…
How often does income change? I don't see what's 'hostile' about asking people to fill in a form a couple of times per year (at most) for €12k.
Compared with the ten minutes filing taxes takes here (with everything prefilled and rarely a need to change anything) this system is a high-risk travesty that wastes a nation's time.
> Chermaine Leysner’s life changed in 2012, when she received a letter from the Dutch tax authority demanding she pay back her child care allowance going back to 2008. Leysner, then a student studying social work, had three children under the age of 6. The tax bill was over €100,000. A student can get €100,000 for child care? That is amazing. For me, that is the most surprising thing in the entire article.
€100,000 = ~$108,000 So if that's the credit for 3 children, for 4 years, that's ~$750/month. I have zero idea about how much it would cost for the Dutch, but in the closest city center to me in the US, the average cost for a licensed daycare center is ~$1300/month. Not unrealistic, really, unless I missed something.
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> Why do people need to receive hundreds of thousands of Euros for children daycare? It's not about "daycare", it is about assisting families in the (massive) expenses that raising a child incurs. Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Obviously thi…
I think you misunderstood me. I am not saying they don't deserve support. I am saying that the government can support people in a way that is not so bureaucratic. Pay the institutions like schools, daycare, etc directly and don't burden the parents with requesting benefits and sending around enormous amounts of money. The institutions can apply for government money for each child they have to take care of. And the pa…
This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues, they also maintained illegal lists of 'potential fraudulent people' on which 100's of thousands of people that had done nothing wrong, such as having the 'wrong' surname. It's rotten to the core and to date there have been zero consequences for the perps and the damage continues to pile up. Our government has fallen…
Meanwhile, the irony amidst all this is that the Netherlands is the largest tax haven for companies globally. Literally every brand/company you can think of is legally headquartered in NL for tax purposes. Eg: FAANG, Disney, IKEA, Uber, Mars Chocolate, etc etc
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2021/03/25/wetsv...
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Whilst you are right in general that biased algorithms are bad even when people using them are good, the problem in _this_ scandal was the the people using the algorithm were trigger-happy, and partially so in a biased way.
I only have as much information as is included in the original article, but this seems like a big issue to me: >Having dual nationality was marked as a big risk indicator, as was a low income. Again, even if these cases were all impartially investigated, you're still explicitly targeting low-income people and dual-nationals, probably significantly more likely to be an ethnic minority. I think the algorithm is a worth…
This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues, they also maintained illegal lists of 'potential fraudulent people' on which 100's of thousands of people that had done nothing wrong, such as having the 'wrong' surname. It's rotten to the core and to date there have been zero consequences for the perps and the damage continues to pile up. Our government has fallen…
On the other hand one of the main triggers for this whole operation was the mass fraud by people from Bulgaria who netted a lot of benefits by gaming the system. They traveled to the Netherlands, applied for benefits and then went back to Bulgaria and used Dutch bank accounts and debit cards to get the cash. The tax office never wanted that to happen again and started this program to find fraudsters but ended up clas…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand one of the main triggers for this whole operation was the mass fraud by people from Bulgaria who netted a lot of benefits by gaming the system. They traveled to the Netherlands, applied for benefits and then went back to Bulgaria and used Dutch bank accounts and debit cards to get the cash. The tax office never wanted that to happen again and started this program to find fraudsters but ended up clas…
> Why do people need to receive hundreds of thousands of Euros for children daycare? It's not about "daycare", it is about assisting families in the (massive) expenses that raising a child incurs. Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Obviously thi…
Which IMHO the European pension system is massively flawed as it's basically a Ponzi scheme that requires more and more people to keep the system going, more people that will consume more resources and need more real estate to live in, real-este which governments and banks have turned into a speculation vehicle making them unaffordable for the new generation of young people who are supposed to be many and pay into the system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand one of the main triggers for this whole operation was the mass fraud by people from Bulgaria who netted a lot of benefits by gaming the system. They traveled to the Netherlands, applied for benefits and then went back to Bulgaria and used Dutch bank accounts and debit cards to get the cash. The tax office never wanted that to happen again and started this program to find fraudsters but ended up clas…
> mass fraud by people from Bulgaria turned out that in the period 2007-2013, 805 Bulgarians From https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarenfraude
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> […] in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. There was no personal gain nor illicit benefits gained by the civil servants responsible. For something to be corruption, the perpetrator has to gain something.
Would a promotion (or not losing your job) count as a gain?