Samenvatting

The childcare benefits affair refers to a period between 2005 and 2019 in which an estimated 30,000 families were deliberately put into serious financial and personal harm by the tax administration because of often unjustified suspicions of fraudulent behaviour. Inquiries into the political and administrative causes and consequences led to a restructuring of the tax administration and the resignation of the cabinet at the beginning of 2021. By reconstructing the affair, we analyse what role politics and politicians played and how they attempted to avoid blame for the affair. Several strategies were used to avoid blame, including tasking a committee to write a report, restructuring the tax administration and promising swift compensation to the victims. The only party that seems to have avoided blame is parliament, despite multiple indications that members of parliament played an important role in the emergence of the affair.