SMS Parking must provide data to the tax authorities from the court
SMS Parking is required by the court in Den Bosch to share customer data with the tax authorities. Last year, the court in Den Bosch ruled that the Tax and Customs Administration would harm the privacy of SMS Parking customers when gaining access to the customer database.
Car owners can pay parking fees with their smartphone via SMS Parking. The tax authorities want to have the company’s data in their hands, because the tax authorities state that they need it to combat fraud. This particularly concerns lease drivers who may have driven more private kilometers than they have stated and are therefore guilty of tax evasion.
SMS Parking initially refused to provide its customer details to the tax authorities. This concerns data from SMS Parking from 2012. The Tax and Customs Administration decided to go to court. SMS Parking won this case at the court in Den Bosch at the end of last year. The judge was of the opinion that privacy would be violated.
The tax authorities decided to appeal and on Tuesday the court in Den Bosch ruled that SMS Parking must still transfer customer data. The court acknowledges that this violates some privacy rules, but the public interest would outweigh this case. The judges also state that the requested license plate data cannot be directly traced back to an individual. Also, the promise of the tax authorities to immediately destroy data if there is no fraud involved in the verdict. SMS Parking has indicated that it will now hand over the customer data for 2012.
The tax authorities have been looking for parking data for some time. For example, the Tax and Customs Administration has already received data from Service House Parking. This provider processes all license plate data entered at parking meters. Yellowbrick, a competitor of SMS Parking, has also decided to hand over data after consultation with its lawyers. Service House Parking recently decided to significantly shorten its retention period; From now on, data will be kept for a maximum of thirteen weeks, which means that the Tax and Customs Administration cannot request complete annual data.