Im a new user

The deceased person's estate has to inform the deceased person's employer about the redemption. The estate will then pay income tax on the benefit and the employer has to pay the arbetsgivaravgift.

I wonder what happens if I earn some points from a work trip today, then my employer goes bankrupt next week and is liquidated. Then I use the points for a private trip next year after the company has been liquidated. According to the law, I have to inform my employer about the benefit so that my employer can declare and pay the correct arbetsgivaravgift, but if my employer has been liquidated, there is no address to which I can send the notification of the benefit. Can I just publish an announcement in Post- och inrikes tidningar? Would Skatteverket try to collect the arbetsgivaravgift from me if the employer no longer exists?

GUWonder

If the company is liquidated and no longer exists, further claims against the company either have nowhere to go or will eventually have nowhere to go. I would be very much surprised if a company's government obligations in Sweden could be made to be an individual employee's liability for those government obligations the employer had unless one of a limited set of conditions applied -- conditions that would not be applicable to the typical flying worker bee for what was a big employer.

Have fun with this: https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?...ileOId=1565212

I strongly suspect that the estates of most deceased persons don't formally take into account frequent flyer program balances that were in some way or another under the control of (or otherwise attributable to) the since-deceased person. I guess the least taxed road for the descendants of the deceased is to let such accounts have their points just be left unused to the point that they expire and become SAS's gain?

johan rebel

I figure there's no shortage of far bigger fish they could and should go after. They could start with all those samordningsnummer fiskar, just to name one example.

Johan

GUWonder

When it comes to tax compliance purposes for people subject to Swedish taxation, whether a person has a personal number from Skatteverket, is a foreigner entitled to only a coordination number from Skatteverket, or a person has no identification number whatsoever from Skatteverket, Skatteverket can still go fishing after the person for taxes due under Swedish law when income (and/or other taxable benefit) subject to Swedish taxation comes to their attention.

I do wonder if any of the 2017 EBD accounts listed as being based in Sweden -- something done on the basis of mailing address or telephone number on file for the account member -- are for people who were legally not subject to Swedish taxation in 2017 and may still not be. Merely having an address or telephone number indicating a given country doesn't necessarily mean the person is or has ever been subject to taxation in that country. And merely not having any address or telephone number in a given country doesn't necessarily mean the person is not or has never been subject to taxation in the country where they have neither an address nor telephone number.

Speaking of bigger fish, maybe Skatteverket will go after all those people who have a cell phone and related phone service provided by their employer but use the company-paid phone service a lot for personal entertainment such as surfing FT, travel blogs, etc.

nacho

Those people who have samordningsnummer are not able to do much in Sweden (they can't even open a bank account), and why would they have a big pot of EB points?

Im a new user

If SK wants to hide the information, why doesn't SK simply move Eurobonus to a subsidiary, Eurobonus Youxian Gongsi or Eurobonus OAO or something?

What can SKV do with this information? It may be possible to deduce that many of the points were earned from flights and other expenses paid by the employer, for example if the member's annual salary is 1 MSEK but the points impossibly could have been earnt without spending 2 MSEK, but it is not possible to tell if the points were used for private or corporate expenses.

It says that SK has appealed to HFD so it will take longer until SKV gets the information.

CPH-Flyer

SKV will look for people with high earnings and high redemption levels, open a tax case and it will be for the member to show that the flows are not taxable.

Fredrik74

Not necessarily high earnings. I think "low" earnings and high redemption levels could be even more of a red flag.

https://www.expressen.se/dinapengar/...s-bonuskunder/

GUWonder

Can the mentioned Skatteverket coordinator for this initiative tell us what Swedish employees should pay in tax for using their employer-paid smartphones, mobile phone service and computers for doing personal junk?

First and last name along with the birthdate info allows Skatteverket to run a query to see who on the SAS-supplied list (of SK elites) is/was subject to Swedish taxation.

So it seems Skatteverket's first order of business is to identify people subject to Swedish taxation. Then they seem likely to use the rest of the info to come up with a high level estimate of unpaid/due tax liability; and then determine if it is worth a deeper dive to go after tax subjects for this money or for Skatteverket to come up with a new policy/policy announcement about how they plan to implement taxation of this stuff.

How many SAS elites have a misleading birth date on file on their frequent flyer accounts? And what about those irregular situations where an SAS elite account may actually be an account that co-mingles activity by two or more relatives (or even strangers) with at least partially the same name?

JR67

My guess: Nothing will happen.The information they get isn't enough for them to demand explanation. The courts will throw it out in a New York minute. Even in Sweden there exists an idea that you are innocent until at least there is some compelling evidence that you aren't. The info they request can't give them that information.

Anyone who volunteers it is a fool. Let them jump through hoops...

GUWonder

My guess is that most Swedish EBDs don't have a clue that Skatteverket is doing this thing. Who knows if Skatteverket will even ever inform all of them.

Volunteering to do Skatteverket's investigation for it is a risky gamble for any subjects of this (presumably very preliminary) investigation -- an investigation that seems to be a fishing expedition of sorts to see if the waters may be rich enough to fish more and deeper.

I don't know if the Swedish courts would throw this out so quickly (if even throw it out at all), but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that Skatteverket may identify an easy SK*G target, assess and apply a tax liability for the points use, and then take its chances on that being the test case. In other words, expect the target to be a working stiff and not some Bertil Hult level player. Oh, wait, he too has listed himself as being non-resident in Sweden so as to minimize his exposure to Skatteverket.

Im a new user

It's weird that they didn't ask for the Eurobonus member's address. First name, last name and date of birth probably gives a couple of doubles. "I'm not a Eurobonus member! You've got the wrong Anders Andersson, born 1950-01-01! There are two others with the same name and date of birth. You must be looking for one of the others."

It is possible that they are currently trying to figure out how to determine how much tax people should pay, since it is not at all clear what the value of the benefit is. Make a few test cases where big spenders end up in HFD and see where this leads.

If they find suspicious points activity, then they could request more information about those accounts from SK. Even if it is too late to get the 2017 data, they could request the 2020 data for those accounts and hope that the Eurobonus member still uses points privately.

GUWonder

Skatteverket did ask for the list of those EBDs with an address listed in Sweden and/or a phone number listed as +46.

It (i.e., not asking for a specific home/business address on file for the accounts) at this point is only weird to me if it wasn't at a very preliminary stage for its investigation into determining how to proceed -- if at all -- against any frequent flyers for this kind of thing.

How many Anders Anderssons in Skatteverket's files for Swedish tax subjects born on January 1, 1950? I don't think it would be too difficult for Skatteverket to figure out which of those were not an EBD in 2017, especially as Skatteverket would probably follow up with demanding that SAS provide additional PII and account info for it to use to nail down a target of concern.

By the way, there seems to be only one Anders Andersson born on January 1, 1950 in Skatteverket's records.

Im a new user

Maybe they are just trying to find some big fish at this point and then they try to figure out what to do with the information.

Of course, SK would refuse to provide additional information and by the time it's been through HFD, it could well be past the 10-year limit.

I didn't actually check the records when I wrote that. It seems that there were two of them born on the 14th. Name+date of birth probably gives a unique hit in most cases.

CPH-Flyer

I would never volunteer any information, just wait until they come up with something.

However, as with most tax laws in the world, the burden of proof rests much heavier with the tax payer than it does with the tax collector. While not guilty until proven innocent, it can still be a matter of being able to prove your innosence to get out of a grey zone, rather than the authorities proving guilt.