In its judgment of 15 November 2019, the Supreme Court (Tax Division) ruled that in administrative penalty cases, the administrative judge is obliged to always caution a person on whom an administrative penalty has been imposed in advance at the hearing. This means that the court must inform the fined party prior to the questioning that it is not obliged to answer. Thus, the Supreme Court does not follow the view sometimes defended in tax law that the caution should only be given if a party, viewed in isolation, is obliged to appear at the hearing and provide information to the court (Article 8:27 of the General Administration Law Act). We discussed another aspect of this judgment – the summoning and hearing of witnesses in administrative law – in another blog post.
The full blog post is written in Dutch.
Date: 24 June 2020
ECLI: ECLI:NL:HR:2019:1786
Author: Christien Saris