Go Back  FlyerTalk Forums > Miles&Points > Airlines and Mileage Programs > SAS | EuroBonus
Reload this Page >

Skatteverket asks for names of Sweden-based EBD members

Skatteverket asks for names of Sweden-based EBD members

Old Oct 12, 2020, 5:55 am
  #31  
Suspended
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Watchlisted by the prejudiced, en route to purgatory
Programs: Just Say No to Fleecing and Blacklisting
Posts: 102,103
Originally Posted by fassy
indeed, if SKV would pick on me... that would be my first line of defense. Get the cash equivalent value SK paid and tax me on it...
Their needing to get that information to arrive at an assessment of real value may help buy time before they send the royal bailiff flying around after you to grab whatever they can from you.

Given how busy/slow the Supreme Administrative Court can be in Stockholm, make sure to keep appealing it up to that court if you need to and can do so. I am sure that there are more than a few judges there that find the bureaucratic actions to be clownish too often and thus need to check the bureaucrats' work.

So who here is breathing a sigh of relief for not being an SK*G?

Last edited by GUWonder; Oct 12, 2020 at 6:08 am
GUWonder is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 6:19 am
  #32  
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: AGH
Posts: 5,951
I think I will be ok anyway... I'm just a lowly EBD with <500k points on the books and most of the time just hit the 90k status but do not exceed it massively

And spend more than enough points on official business travel, either the tickets itself or upgrades. But proving that, will be a PiA.

Last edited by fassy; Oct 12, 2020 at 6:25 am
fassy is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 7:30 am
  #33  
 
Join Date: May 2017
Posts: 2,015
Originally Posted by fassy
I think I will be ok anyway... I'm just a lowly EBD with <500k points on the books and most of the time just hit the 90k status but do not exceed it massively

And spend more than enough points on official business travel, either the tickets itself or upgrades. But proving that, will be a PiA.
I suspect that they are looking for very obvious cases. For example, you own a company and pay all of the company's expenses with your personal credit card, earning lots of points. Or you are involved in organised crime but officially you are unemployed and the tax authority notes that you have taken lots of flights (both revenue and award) and the tax authority wonders how those flights were funded. For less obvious cases, it's too much trouble for too little gain.

On the other hand, there was that incident a couple of years ago when the authorities complained that the Swedish post didn't properly declare your shipments to customs when you ordered something from China for 10 kr. They now properly charge you 2.50 kr in VAT on the goods, a 60 kr handling fee and 15 kr VAT on the handling fee.
Im a new user is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 7:51 am
  #34  
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: AGH
Posts: 5,951
Originally Posted by Im a new user
I suspect that they are looking for very obvious cases. For example, you own a company and pay all of the company's expenses with your personal credit card, earning lots of points.
Well, that's me... probably SEK 300k/year expenses... so about 60k to 80k extra points via AMEX. Hardly worth investigating. But have been burned by SKV before...

Originally Posted by Im a new user
On the other hand, there was that incident a couple of years ago when the authorities complained that the Swedish post didn't properly declare your shipments to customs when you ordered something from China for 10 kr. They now properly charge you 2.50 kr in VAT on the goods, a 60 kr handling fee and 15 kr VAT on the handling fee.
Yepp.... working for my last employer, they used pay-role services in Sweden and every year I reported on very old and dormant pension insurance I do have in Germany. For many years nothing happened but like 5 years ago I got a letter form SKV that they want to investigate me since the pay-role service obviously did not report the insurance correctly in one of the years. After a very lengthy processes, and paying 5.000 SEK for a tax lawyer to sort this out, I got the bill from SKV: 90... in words... NINTY SEK in taxes to be paid.

Was just lucky that my employer picked up the invoices from tax laywer.
fassy is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 8:07 am
  #35  
Suspended
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Watchlisted by the prejudiced, en route to purgatory
Programs: Just Say No to Fleecing and Blacklisting
Posts: 102,103
Originally Posted by Im a new user
I suspect that they are looking for very obvious cases. For example, you own a company and pay all of the company's expenses with your personal credit card, earning lots of points. Or you are involved in organised crime but officially you are unemployed and the tax authority notes that you have taken lots of flights (both revenue and award) and the tax authority wonders how those flights were funded. For less obvious cases, it's too much trouble for too little gain.

On the other hand, there was that incident a couple of years ago when the authorities complained that the Swedish post didn't properly declare your shipments to customs when you ordered something from China for 10 kr. They now properly charge you 2.50 kr in VAT on the goods, a 60 kr handling fee and 15 kr VAT on the handling fee.
If Sweden plans to use the EBD ranks to try to find organized crime figures in Sweden, they really are barking up the wrong tree and should have the hounds go hunting on richer grounds and let it be the criminal-hunting hounds rather than the likely Skatteverket people to do this EBD hunt at this point.

How much manufactured spending activity goes on with Eurobonus-earning bank cards in Sweden? Are EuroBonus points earned from personal spending on EuroBonus-earning bank cards taxable in Sweden? Are store points generated by buying say groceries taxable when the grocery purchases are part of manufactured spend on goods that are sold by the retail buyer at the purchase price or even a discount on the purchase price?

Are the trades people who are often self-employed or employed in companies where they have a controlling/beneficial ownership stake -- like the many people who work in the building-related trades (construction, electrical, plumbing, etc.) -- not subject to the same attention as the SAS high-flyers for using personal bank/loyalty program cards when buying goods/services that are reimbursed by the customer/employer? Big or small fish, the game should be played on the same rules applied consistently for all subject to the jurisdiction's rules.

Last edited by GUWonder; Oct 12, 2020 at 8:34 am
GUWonder is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 8:23 am
  #36  
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: AGH
Posts: 5,951
Originally Posted by GUWonder
If Sweden plans to use the EBD ranks to try to find organized crime figures in Sweden, they really are barking up the wrong tree and should have the hounds go hunting on richer grounds and let it be the criminal-hunting hounds rather than the likely Skatteverket people to do this EBD hunt at this point.
Well, hunting business travelers, and trying to squeeze taxes out of them, is for sure much less dangerous than trying to fight organized crime. I suppose, since this issue is coming up every now and then, some hot-shot middle manager at SKV thought on this under the shower in the morning and found if a great opportunity to go for low hanging fruits and kickstart a big career boost. Just get the numbers from SK, compute the benefit value and fine to sneaky tax cheats! Millions of SEK in fine and back taxes! that has to be enough for being recognized and promoted into a senior leadership role at SKV, right? But then failed to realize many have failed before doing so... since things are much more complicated than this.

Originally Posted by GUWonder
How much manufactured spending activity goes on with Eurobonus-earning bank cards in Sweden? Are EuroBonus points earned from personal spending on EuroBonus-earning bank cards taxable in Sweden? Are store points generated by buying say groceries taxable when the grocery purchases are part of manufactured spend on goods that are sold by the retail buyer at the purchase price or even a discount on the purchase price?
No, points earned on private spending is not liable for taxation. No matter what. It is seen as a sales discount of sorts... At least not for now.
fassy is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 8:35 am
  #37  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Stockholm
Programs: Various
Posts: 3,365
Originally Posted by GUWonder
How much manufactured spending activity goes on with Eurobonus-earning bank cards in Sweden?
There are the Betalo and Billhop solutions. There are possibly more such but I don't use it so I don't know all the details.The general idea is to use them to pay your bills and earn points that way.

I don't know about the IT capabilities of our tax friends but surely they would know who has a lot of expenses paid by their employer. Combine that with the list of EBD and you can eliminate a few. Then possibly figure out a way to find people who redeemed lots of points but don't have the income to have earned these points on their own. I can't see that many cases if they're not looking for specific individuals. If you're employed by the government at any level or any of its agencies it could be a problem of course if you're found.
Fredrik74 is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 8:52 am
  #38  
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: AGH
Posts: 5,951
Originally Posted by Fredrik74
There are the Betalo and Billhop solutions. There are possibly more such but I don't use it so I don't know all the details.The general idea is to use them to pay your bills and earn points that way.
Used Betalo before with the COOP Mastercard since it was free of charge. Was decent. Don't know Bilhop. But all of them charge now like 2.5% e.g. 10.000 SEK charged to AMEX Elite will give you 2.000 points for 250kr. Which still is a decent value but hardly very attractive like the COOP setup was.

Originally Posted by Fredrik74
I don't know about the IT capabilities of our tax friends but surely they would know who has a lot of expenses paid by their employer.
They don't know expense reimbursement were paid to an employee account without a bank account/statement review. Employers only report:

Skattepliktig bilfrmn - taxable benefit for the company car
Drivmedel vid bilfrmn - taxable benefit for the fuel for said rental car
vriga skattepliktiga frmner - all other taxable benefits, this would include the bonus points.
Bostadsfrmn - company paid housing
Bilersttning - mileage for using the own car as a service vehicle
Traktamente - per diem for travel

Actually worked with my accountant and they said, I won't need to report anything regading Bilersttning or Traktamente if this gets just paid via an expense reimbursement mechanism. Only needs to be reported to SKV if if is part of the paycheck and reported on the pay slip.
fassy is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 9:07 am
  #39  
Suspended
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Watchlisted by the prejudiced, en route to purgatory
Programs: Just Say No to Fleecing and Blacklisting
Posts: 102,103
Originally Posted by Fredrik74
Then possibly figure out a way to find people who redeemed lots of points but don't have the income to have earned these points on their own.
That's sort of what prompted me to ask about Swedish manufactured spend to generate Eurobonus points. In the US there are a population of people earning huge amounts of points per year on personal card transactions by doing manufactured spending on the cards while legitimately having rather low incomes.
GUWonder is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 9:11 am
  #40  
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: AGH
Posts: 5,951
Originally Posted by GUWonder
That's sort of what prompted me to ask about Swedish manufactured spend to generate Eurobonus points. In the US there are a population of people earning huge amounts of points per year on personal card transactions by doing manufactured spending on the cards while legitimately having rather low incomes while doing so.
Well, sure... in theory you could set up shop on the parking garage of a mall and hand everybody your AMEX referrer link on a card and hope some will sign up. Or pay the fees for the manufacturing spending since you find it good value. But in these cases it will be trivial to show SKV that the points were not "earned" as "income". Well, we might argue about handing out the referrer links.
fassy is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 9:24 am
  #41  
Suspended
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Watchlisted by the prejudiced, en route to purgatory
Programs: Just Say No to Fleecing and Blacklisting
Posts: 102,103
Originally Posted by fassy
Well, sure... in theory you could set up shop on the parking garage of a mall and hand everybody your AMEX referrer link on a card and hope some will sign up. Or pay the fees for the manufacturing spending since you find it good value. But in these cases it will be trivial to show SKV that the points were not "earned" as "income". Well, we might argue about handing out the referrer links.
Amex card referral bonuses are taxable income in the US. Do enough of them and Amex sends out Form 1099-MISC to the referring individual and also feeds that very same info to the IRS tax authorities. I would assume they are taxable in Sweden too.

Maybe Skatteverket should go after the real goldmine of data: the data from the bank card issuers.
GUWonder is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 12:33 pm
  #42  
 
Join Date: May 2017
Posts: 2,015
Originally Posted by fassy
Well, sure... in theory you could set up shop on the parking garage of a mall and hand everybody your AMEX referrer link on a card and hope some will sign up. Or pay the fees for the manufacturing spending since you find it good value. But in these cases it will be trivial to show SKV that the points were not "earned" as "income". Well, we might argue about handing out the referrer links.
Probably taxed as inkomst av hobby.

https://www.skatteverket.se/privat/s...680003940.html
Im a new user is offline  
Old Oct 12, 2020, 2:48 pm
  #43  
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: AGH
Posts: 5,951
Ah yes... we have really come a long way since giving up the 10th.

Probably should look for another place to stay, heard Andorra is nice
fassy is offline  
Old Oct 13, 2020, 5:26 am
  #44  
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: CPH
Programs: UAMP S, TK M&S E (*G), Marriott LTP, IHG P, SK EBG
Posts: 11,000
Originally Posted by Im a new user
Probably taxed as inkomst av hobby.

https://www.skatteverket.se/privat/s...680003940.html
I guess those who beg outside shops should be taxed too.

Originally Posted by fassy
Ah yes... we have really come a long way since giving up the 10th.

Probably should look for another place to stay, heard Andorra is nice
What about Monaco?
nacho is offline  
Old Oct 13, 2020, 5:57 am
  #45  
 
Join Date: May 2017
Posts: 2,015
Originally Posted by nacho
I guess those who beg outside shops should be taxed too.
The begging tax was apparently abolished when Sweden abolished gift tax in 2004. A quick Google search found this: https://juridiktillalla.se/fraga/201...geri-beskattas
Im a new user is offline  

Thread Tools
Search this Thread

Contact Us - Manage Preferences - Archive - Advertising - Cookie Policy - Privacy Statement - Terms of Service -

This site is owned, operated, and maintained by MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. Copyright © 2024 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. All rights reserved. Designated trademarks are the property of their respective owners.