BRUSSELS – Over 9,000 Belgian taxpayers have been waiting more than five years for the authorities to deal with complaints about their tax bills, it was confirmed on Monday.

According to a new survey by Belgium’s official financial watchdog, the Court of Auditors, the country’s tax authorities are snowed under with complaints.

The authorities are supposed to deal with complaints about tax bills within six to nine months, but the Court of Auditors survey shows that on thousands of occasions this is not happening.

According to the study, 9,000 complaints made before 1999 had still not been dealt with by the end of May 2003.

The figure represents an improvement on an earlier study carried out in 2001, however.

Then, the Court found that the authorities had failed to deal with a record 190,000 complaints received before 1999.

The Court estimates that the tax authorities’ failure to deal with its complaints backlog is costing the Belgian state around EUR 5.5 billion.

[Copyright Expatica 2004]

Subject: Belgian news