Self-employed persons are required to be registered in the Trade Register of the Chamber of Commerce. Upon registration, a VAT number is created based on the self-employed person’s BSN number. The Data Protection Authority (AP) is now investigating whether the Tax and Customs Administration has a legal basis to process these BSN numbers in this manner.
The regulator emphasizes that the BSN is a unique number that can be linked to a single person. Extra strict rules apply to the use of special personal data, such as this, because it allows information from different files to be linked. This entails privacy risks such as misuse of personal data and identity fraud.
