‘Zuidas has huge influence on tax law specialisation’

This week, journalism platform Follow The Money (FTM) published the results of an investigation into the ‘Accent Indirect Tax’ specialisation; a joint track of the Master’s degrees in tax law of Maastricht University, Tilburg University, VU Amsterdam and Leiden University. The track trains students to become VAT and customs specialists.

25,000 euros
The track is sponsored by the Tax and Customs Administration and six major Zuidas offices: Baker McKenzie, Deloitte, EY, KPMG Meijburg & Co, Loyens & Loeff and PwC. According to the report, these offices each pay 25,000 euros a year to have a say, for which they get plenty in return.

In 2015 the universities wrote that, contrary to other programmes, in this track, it was possible to keep the needs of the sponsors in mind and identify talent at an early stage. Notes and emails supplied by Maastricht University at the request of FTM apparently show that the sponsors have a say in which professors and teachers are hired as well as the contents of the programme.

According to FTM, the sponsors also select representatives to join the supervisory board of the joint specialisation and a database containing alumni information is used for staff recruitment, which is possibly in violation of privacy rules.

Academic freedom
According to critics in the FTM investigation, the programme is overly focused on professional practice, which may pose a risk to academic freedom. Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf told FTM that he is concerned and wants the four universities to explain themselves. While he believes that having a vocational component in university degree programmes is perfectly okay, this should in no way come at the expense of academic freedom.

VU Amsterdam plans to investigate whether the independence of the specialisation is adequately safeguarded. Another tax law specialisation, ‘Tax & Technology’, will also be reviewed in this context. Leiden University has informed Follow the Money that they intend to re-evaluate their participation in the partnership.

Conflicts of interest
Collaboration between universities and the business community has been a topic of discussion for many years. This discussion gained momentum again in early 2021 after de Volkskrant and Folia published articles about professors of tax law and tax economics who were also employed at major Zuidas offices.

With help from the universities, Minister Dijkgraaf sent an overview to the House of Representatives at the beginning of this year showing that at least 263 chairs at Dutch universities are funded by the Tax and Customs Administration, local authorities, agencies and foundations.

Following research by newspaper the Financieele Dagblad he was forced to admit that the list was far from exhaustive. He would like to see universities cooperate in creating a national register, open to everyone, showing the ancillary jobs held by professors and other researchers.

TU Delft
The Delft University is also struggling with that issue. On 12 March, the FD wrote (in Dutch) about Delft ‘hydrogen professor’ Ad van Wijk. It turned out he was sponsored for two days a week between 2016 and 2021 by Netbeheer Nederland, the interest and lobby organisation of grid operators in the Netherlands. It had not reported this at the time because he would not have known that it was required by the Dutch Scientific Code of Conduct Integrity. TU Delft confirmed to the FD that Van Wijk had indeed not been made aware of this at the time, even though he was supposed to comply with it.

A few weeks earlier, on 2 March, rector Tim van der Hagen sent around his take on ‘cooperation and transparency’ via the TU Delft newsletter (it can also be found on the intranet). That was another response to the Volkskrant’s investigation (in Dutch) into professors who are (partly) subsidised by the fossil industry.

Unlike TU Eindhoven and the University of Twente, TU Delft did not want to provide names, but only the official titles of the three chairs in question, which are also listed in a recently published list of (partly) externally funded chairs.

In his statement to TU Delft employees, Van der Hagen explained this choice. According to him, the discussion should be about money flows and not the people behind them. After all, besides openness and transparency, he has ‘another very important obligation”’, he wrote, and that is ‘a duty of care towards our employees’.

“Nowadays, our scientists are sometimes given a hard time on (social) media channels. This is regrettable, because the discussion should be about content, and researchers should feel safe to engage in public debate.” How that should be done without making themselves known as individuals is not made clear in the letter.

HOP, Hein Cuppen / Delta, Saskia Bonger
Translation: Taalcentrum-VU