Compliance by design: Automatic profit tax return for freelancers – A pilot of the Netherlands Tax and Customs Administration

The Netherlands has more than 1 million freelancers (self-employed persons without employees) that make a significant number of errors, often unintentionally, when complying with their tax obligations. This chapter describes a pilot project by the Netherlands Tax and Customs Administration (NTCA) to introduce an automatic profit tax return for this segment of taxpayers by working closely with software developers. In doing so it explains the structure of this public-private collaboration, how the automatic profit tax return is created and what compliance by design means in practice.