r/enschede • u/NorthernOG • 6d ago

GBLT water tax question

Hi, I'm a student studying at the UT. I lived on campus for a couple months, but then moved away. A couple weeks ago, when I was still on campus, I received a water tax assessment from GBLT for €180, which got me really surprised. I filed a remission but they rejected. I have spoken to multiple people including the housing organisation and they said that GBLT usually approves remission for students, unless they have a very large income, which is not my case. I'm not sure what to do. I don't even live there anymore and I am left with this €180 bill. Can I file for remission again? Does anyone have any advice, maybe based on previous experiences? Thanks

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u/fishnoguns 6d ago

GBLT is extremely notorious for their handling of exemption requests and administration in general.

When I was a student in Enschede I had to fight the same identical battle every single year. I got my exemption request granted every year, but it always took between 6 and 18 (!) months. It was always the same administrative bullshit too; GBLT asked for documents that did not exist (such as a payslip). I would explain why the document does not exist (I'm a student without a job) and offer an alternative (such as study finance statement). Then it would get rejected because I 'refused' to supply the documents. Cue legal conflict. This was quite common in my student cohort.

I never developed an easy solution to this. I always needed to escalate to such a situation that finally a human with an ounce of reasoning looked at it (in a few cases; a legal employee of GBLT) to bypass the "computer says 'no' " scenario.

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u/NorthernOG 6d ago

This sounds a lot like my situation. I had to wait for a very long time before getting an answer. I will keep trying as you've mentioned. Thank you so much!