Several parents who were victims of the tax office’s heavy-handed approach to detecting fraud have been sent their official files, only to discover nearly all the text has been blacked out.

Some 300 families were forced to pay back thousands of euros in what the tax office said was wrongly-claimed child benefits without knowing what they were supposed to have done wrong.

Last month, a government committee set up to investigate the scandal said the tax office should pay compensation to the families some of whom faced financial ruin.

Most were dual national families, who not only lost benefits but were ordered to pay back money stretching several years. One family faced a €75,000 bill after the tax office said it had wrongly claimed benefits without producing any evidence.

The aim of sending families their files was to show parents why the tax office suspected them of wrong doing. Many of the victims have no idea why the tax office decided they were making fraudulent claims.

But social media is now full of films of people showing their files, with page after page of blacked-out text.

Wordt het niet tijd om de zwarte stiften stiekem te verstoppen op departementen en overheidsdiensten? Doe ik soms ook met de 5-jarige en dat werkt heel goed.

— kim van keken (@kimvankeken) December 10, 2019

MPs Pieter Omtzigt and Renske Leijten, who have campaigned on behalf of the duped families, have said they are ‘speechless’.

‘The parents are furious, and rightly so’ said SP parliamentarian Leijten. ‘They want to know why they are considered to be fraudsters.’

Finance ministry spokesman Andre Karels said on Twitter that the information which had been blacked out concerned details about other people and the childcare organisations concerned. ‘Their own information is legible,’ he said.

Tax minister Menno Snel said later he could understand the family’s anger. The document in the film is a report about the checks on a childcare institution and contained only one line about the family concerned, Snel said.