Government won’t appeal against GDPR fine to tax authorities – IT Pro – News

The Dutch government will not appeal the GDPR fine to the tax authorities. Secretary of State Van Rijk of Fiscality “respects the decision” and says he will use the fine as a motivation to improve the tax authorities’ privacy policy.

Minister of State Marnix van Rijk for Tax and Finance wrote this in Speech to Parliament† He thus formally sends the fine decision of the Dutch Data Protection Authority to the Chamber of Deputies. About A fine of 3.7 million euros The privacy supervisor imposed on tax authorities on Wednesday for violating the General Data Protection Regulation in the subsidy scandal. Van Rijk acknowledges the allegations and violations in the letter. “The AP’s verdict is harsh and unequivocal,” he said. “I am facing the fines as a painful outcome, but understandable given the seriousness of the results. It shows once again that fundamental improvements are necessary in the tax authorities.”

Although the government could still formally appeal the fine, Van Rig decided not to. “I will not object and pay the fines,” he says. During the investigation by the Associated Press, the Department of Taxes and Customs indicated at various points that it did not agree with the findings of the regulator, but Van Rijk decided not to file a formal appeal against this.

The Secretary of State described the fine as “an affirmation of the need to reorganize data processing in the signaling process for supervision.” Most of the offenses committed by the tax authorities during the subsidy case have been stopped for some time. For example, FSV, the now infamous blacklist, no longer exists since February 2020.

Despite this, Van Rig still wants to make some changes to the IRS based on the fine, he writes. One of the violations was that the data protection officer of the Tax and Customs Administration was not involved in collecting the data in a timely manner. Van Rijk wants to better engage the data protection officer “on the basis of the Dutch data protection authority’s response” in preparing a new data protection impact assessment.