IT Enabled Risk Management for Taxation and Customs: The Case of AEO Assessment in the Netherlands

Building collaborative relationships with trusted businesses is a longterm strategy for EU governments. Recently, for the EU Tax and Customs Administration (TCA), the realization of this goal has become more visible with the emerging concept of the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO). Businesses in the member states can apply for the AEO certificate. When it is being granted, simplified control procedures and trade facilitation will be provided by the TCA. A possible “win-win situation” can be achieved, with increased trade efficiency and lowered administrative burden. However, without proper selection of trusted business partners, governments may be worse off due to the adverse selection problem caused by information asymmetry. In this paper, we analyze the cause and effect of the adverse selection in the Government-toBusiness relationship building. Further, we show that an IT enabled risk assessment approach can effectively eliminate the G2B information asymmetry and solve the adverse selection problem. The AEO assessment approach of DutchTCA is analysed to give a real life application on how IT is enabling the general risk management approach of the DutchTCA.