Minister of Finance – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2022)

The controller is the Minister of Finance. The data subject’s personal data was processed by the Tax Authority because it suspected him of not fulfilling his tax obligations. This suspicion was raised after the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) had carried out a criminal investigation into the data subject’s tax consultant. As a result of the Tax Authority’s investigation, the data subject had to pay additional taxes. The data subject claimed that the processing was unlawful requested the controller to erase his personal data pursuant to Articles 17(1)(d), 17(2), and 19 GDPR. The controller rejected this request. The data subject objected to the rejection. The controller declared the objection to be unfounded. The data subject then brought the case before the Court. The data subject argued that there were two instances of processing: (1) the selection of the personal data by the Tax Authority of the data collected by the FIOD, and (2) the transfer of personal data from the FIOD to the Tax Authority. The data subject claimed that the Tax Authority processed his personal data without a legal basis, and for a different purpose than it was initially collected for (by the FIOD). The controller, claimed that the selection and collection of the personal data did not fall within the scope of the GDPR, because the Tax Authority acted in the context of assistance to criminal investigations under the Police Information Act at that time. Moreover, the controller stated that there was a legal basis since the Authority had to process for the fulfilment of a statutory obligation, and the performance of a task in the public interest, even though the transfer of the personal data to the Tax Authority did fall within the scope of the GDPR, The Court rejected the data subject’s claim and held that the processing by the Tax Authority had been lawful. First, the Court stated that the FIOD’s processing of personal data falls within the scope of the LED (Directive 201