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Skatteverket asks for names of Sweden-based EBD members
Sweden based EBD members may have some fun soon. SAS has been told to give Skatteverket the names of the EBD members.
It's behind a paywall but this is where it comes from(and then via other forum): https://www.lexnova.se/nyheter/uppgi...-fram-med-vite |
Originally Posted by Fredrik74
(Post 32738872)
Sweden based EBD members may have some fun soon. SAS has been told to give Skatteverket the names of the EBD members.
It's behind a paywall but this is where it comes from(and then via other forum): https://www.lexnova.se/nyheter/uppgi...-fram-med-vite Do you have the case number (målnummer)? |
Originally Posted by Fredrik74
(Post 32738872)
Sweden based EBD members may have some fun soon. SAS has been told to give Skatteverket the names of the EBD members.
It's behind a paywall but this is where it comes from(and then via other forum): https://www.lexnova.se/nyheter/uppgi...-fram-med-vite They could have asked for the other SK*Gs/EBGs too, but I guess they want to see how rewarding the effort is by harvesting and mining the data for EBDs before considering going down this line more. Are they just asking for EBD members with listed account addresses showing residence in Sweden? It seems so. I guess there will be quite the number of Swedish EBD accounts that result in personal tax liabilities (and maybe penalties?) arising from this effort by the Swedish tax authorities. How many years back will they go? Will SAS try to appeal this to a higher court, eat the fine to not comply, or just go ahead with assisting Skatteverket to the fullest extent possible as quickly as possible? |
I'm afraid I don't have the case number since I saw this myself on another forum. It looks like it's already decided by the appeals court. Btw, apparently SAS has already lost a similar case years ago when the Finnish tax authorities wanted access to check certain members from Finland so I'm not sure if crediting to foreign programs would help. I guess it would if it's only about catching the obvious cases.
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I suppose the big question is how they are going to figure out where the points came from and how they were used. If the tax authorities don't accuse me of a crime I don't have to justify anything. Are they going to accuse all EBDs of crimes and force them to show that they aren't criminals? My guess is that they will go after the big fish using a lot of award trips.
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Originally Posted by Fredrik74
(Post 32739341)
I'm afraid I don't have the case number since I saw this myself on another forum. It looks like it's already decided by the appeals court.
Originally Posted by Fredrik74
(Post 32739341)
Btw, apparently SAS has already lost a similar case years ago when the Finnish tax authorities wanted access to check certain members from Finland so I'm not sure if crediting to foreign programs would help. I guess it would if it's only about catching the obvious cases.
I think that the points programmes make it difficult to pay the correct taxes. For example: 10,000 points from work travelling, 10,000 points from private travelling, 10,000 points from work spending on a credit card and 10,000 points from private spending on the same credit card. However, all points end up in the same balance and then you need to keep a lot of papers to tell how many points you've earned from which source. You have to pay tax if you spend the points privately but not if you spend them on a work trip (for example upgrading from economy to business). Bookkeeping takes a lot of time and can presumably be retroactively adjusted to your benefit if the tax authority doesn't ask for information (for example: points spent 10+ years ago from work sources, points spent since then from private sources). If you have used your points privately, then you should inform your employer within a month or something so that the employer can pay the correct arbetsgivaravgift. What happens to the employer and the employee if the employee never informed the employer and the tax authority later discovers the transactions? Can the employer be fined if the employer didn't know what was going on, or will the employee have to pay the employer's fine? Since you pay tax when you use the points and not when you earn them, the employer might not even exist when you use the points. The employer could have gone bankrupt or could have been liquidated or something. I wonder how you are supposed to inform the employer in that situation. |
I'm curious about what will happen. Like I wrote in that thread I don't think it's so much about normal people doing normal things even if it's breaking some rule. I'd be more worried if I had lots of points earned via my job. Besides, I think that Skatteverket may be looking at EBD because they think that's where the points are earned and not realizing what happens with credit cards. And then the people paying company things with their personal credit cards is an interesting story. I hope I won't be the guinea pig if that is ok or not. |
Well, also quite interesting is: What is the monetary value of one EuroBonus point? It can be anything from virtual 0.001c to like 0.10c depending on how you use it. And how do they assess the value at time of spending? Assuming I spend 150.000 and an AMEX 2-4-1 voucher for EU-US-EU on LH F for two. Will they really try to charge me 15.000 EURs in value of a last minute full-fare F ticket and tax it? That is ridiculous and just outright crazy. On the other hand, booking a NH F ticket half a year in advance might cost only 5.000 EUR per person. So they need to actually retroactively check, which fare buckets were open when you booked your flight and then request the pricing for that fare bucket on that day. Not sure the airlines can easily give this to them.
Even more, they probably would need to disclose how much (or how few $) they actually have to hand over to the operating airline for a EB ticket, since that is what I paid. Not a cash equivalent fare. |
Originally Posted by fassy
(Post 32739487)
Well, also quite interesting is: What is the monetary value of one EuroBonus point? It can be anything from virtual 0.001c to like 0.10c depending on how you use it. And how do they assess the value at time of spending? Assuming I spend 150.000 and an AMEX 2-4-1 voucher for EU-US-EU on LH F for two. Will they really try to charge me 15.000 EURs in value of a last minute full-fare F ticket and tax it? That is ridiculous and just outright crazy. On the other hand, booking a NH F ticket half a year in advance might cost only 5.000 EUR per person. So they need to actually retroactively check, which fare buckets were open when you booked your flight and then request the pricing for that fare bucket on that day. Not sure the airlines can easily give this to them.
Even more, they probably would need to disclose how much (or how few $) they actually have to hand over to the operating airline for a EB ticket, since that is what I paid. Not a cash equivalent fare. |
Originally Posted by fassy
(Post 32739487)
Well, also quite interesting is: What is the monetary value of one EuroBonus point? It can be anything from virtual 0.001c to like 0.10c depending on how you use it. And how do they assess the value at time of spending? Assuming I spend 150.000 and an AMEX 2-4-1 voucher for EU-US-EU on LH F for two. Will they really try to charge me 15.000 EURs in value of a last minute full-fare F ticket and tax it? That is ridiculous and just outright crazy. On the other hand, booking a NH F ticket half a year in advance might cost only 5.000 EUR per person. So they need to actually retroactively check, which fare buckets were open when you booked your flight and then request the pricing for that fare bucket on that day. Not sure the airlines can easily give this to them.
Originally Posted by fassy
(Post 32739487)
Even more, they probably would need to disclose how much (or how few $) they actually have to hand over to the operating airline for a EB ticket, since that is what I paid. Not a cash equivalent fare.
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Originally Posted by fassy
(Post 32739487)
Well, also quite interesting is: What is the monetary value of one EuroBonus point? It can be anything from virtual 0.001c to like 0.10c depending on how you use it. And how do they assess the value at time of spending? Assuming I spend 150.000 and an AMEX 2-4-1 voucher for EU-US-EU on LH F for two. Will they really try to charge me 15.000 EURs in value of a last minute full-fare F ticket and tax it? That is ridiculous and just outright crazy. On the other hand, booking a NH F ticket half a year in advance might cost only 5.000 EUR per person. So they need to actually retroactively check, which fare buckets were open when you booked your flight and then request the pricing for that fare bucket on that day. Not sure the airlines can easily give this to them.
Even more, they probably would need to disclose how much (or how few $) they actually have to hand over to the operating airline for a EB ticket, since that is what I paid. Not a cash equivalent fare. Then it would not be for the tax authorities to challenge you in court, it would be for you to challenge them in court. |
Just curious, but does SK prohibit individual customers from having more than one SK Eurobonus account? It would make it easier for some to have one account for business-related crediting and a separate one for personal-related crediting. Maybe that is what SK should do/encourage. And then perhaps SAS can track/award status using the combined activity value from the linked personal and business accounts of the individual customer.
The tax authorities assigning a valuation based on the characteristics of a particular redemption is problematic as the value of an award ticket is rather arguable. The valuation set by the ticket-issuing carrier may be different than: a) the valuation set by the operating carrier on an award ticket; and b) the valuation set by the customer booking the award ticket. It would make more sense and be less complicated if the tax authorities indeed assigned a fixed cash-equivalent value per point issued by SK. As someone on here or on another forum indicated, a SK*G/EBD with a lot of award flights -- premium cabin or otherwise -- may end up coming under the radar of someone making $3400/month before taxes while working for the Swedish tax authorities. You can guess how that may fly with people who have it as their job to find tax cheats/mistakes and do so by suspecting wrongdoing/errors. Keep in mind that it's not extraordinary for tax and other government authorities to be trained to find it suspicious when a person's lifestyle appears to exceed their obvious/declared means for supporting their lifestyle. And type of travel and frequency of travel can be played as a barometer for type of lifestyle being lived by a "suspect". |
Originally Posted by CPH-Flyer
(Post 32739977)
Most likely they will make some quite sweeping assumptions on the share between private and corporate earned points, and the value of the points. I doubt they are going to look at your actual redemptions, the efforts vs the gains would speak against it. They should go for establishing a fixed value of the points and then assign that across the board.
Then it would not be for the tax authorities to challenge you in court, it would be for you to challenge them in court. No tax is payable if you use your corporate earned points to book business trips or if they expire. I have no idea what happens if you convert them to basic points to reach a higher tier as this benefit is used both for work and for private purposes. If you don't reply to the tax authority, then they'd probably assume that all points have been earned from corporate travel and come up with some value of the redemptions which is probably too high. Your employer has to pay arbetsgivaravgift on the value of your benefits, but I wonder if the employer would be punished as severely as the employee if the employee doesn't disclose the value of the benefits and the employer has no way to find out. The employee is supposed to inform the employer about the value of the benefit no later than the 8th of the month after the benefit was used.
Originally Posted by GUWonder
(Post 32740029)
Just curious, but does SK prohibit individual customers from having more than one SK Eurobonus account? It would make it easier for some to have one account for business-related crediting and a separate one for personal-related crediting. Maybe that is what SK should do/encourage. And then perhaps SAS can track/award status using the combined activity value from the linked personal and business accounts of the individual customer.
Originally Posted by GUWonder
(Post 32740029)
The tax authorities assigning a valuation based on the characteristics of a particular redemption is problematic as the value of an award ticket is rather arguable. The valuation set by the ticket-issuing carrier may be different than: a) the valuation set by the operating carrier on an award ticket; and b) the valuation set by the customer booking the award ticket. It would make more sense and be less complicated if the tax authorities indeed assigned a fixed cash-equivalent value per point issued by SK.
Originally Posted by GUWonder
(Post 32740029)
As someone on here or on another forum indicated, a SK*G/EBD with a lot of award flights -- premium cabin or otherwise -- may end up coming under the radar of someone making $3400/month before taxes while working for the Swedish tax authorities. You can guess how that may fly with people who have it as their job to find tax cheats/mistakes and do so by suspecting wrongdoing/errors. Keep in mind that it's not extraordinary for tax and other government authorities to be trained to find it suspicious when a person's lifestyle appears to exceed their obvious/declared means for supporting their lifestyle. And type of travel and frequency of travel can be played as a barometer for type of lifestyle being lived by a "suspect".
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So who is to be contacted at Skatteverket to suggest that they go after Pandions? I have to assume that is where some of the richest award travel accrual from work travel is to be found at SK.
I know there was a time -- now long gone -- when some US Government employees were told they shouldn't use miles earned from work travel for personal travel and the airline would suggest that the way to deal with such situation was to have one account for the USG-paid trips and a different account for personal travel/activity. It hurt status qualification/retention, but it was a way to comply with the USG requirement at the time. |
Originally Posted by Im a new user
(Post 32740112)
The tax rules say that you are taxed on the value of the redemption. If you print out a statement from your FFP showing that you have not redeemed any points during a fiscal year, then there is no tax to pay for that year. Therefore, the tax authority has to look at your redemptions. Likewise, if you have only redeemed 20,000 points for a single Arlanda-Tirstrup return in SAS Go and you can show that you have earned at least 20,000 points from your own credit card spend and private flights, then no tax is payable.
No tax is payable if you use your corporate earned points to book business trips or if they expire. I have no idea what happens if you convert them to basic points to reach a higher tier as this benefit is used both for work and for private purposes. If you don't reply to the tax authority, then they'd probably assume that all points have been earned from corporate travel and come up with some value of the redemptions which is probably too high. Your employer has to pay arbetsgivaravgift on the value of your benefits, but I wonder if the employer would be punished as severely as the employee if the employee doesn't disclose the value of the benefits and the employer has no way to find out. The employee is supposed to inform the employer about the value of the benefit no later than the 8th of the month after the benefit was used. I'm not aware of any programme which allows more than one account. The workaround is to credit private travel to SAS and work travel to Lufthansa, but this hurts your status. Currently, the tax authority only tells you that you should pay tax based on the value of the benefit, but I'm not aware of any guidance on how to find out what the benefit is worth. Presumably they are mainly interested in people with lots of expensive redemptions who will be checked more carefully. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to search through all EBDs. Some of them could have earned 125 points per segment and qualified by number of segments. It's probably more efficient to search through people who have earned more than a certain number of points. The concept of getting the points taxed has also popped up from time to time in Denmark. Especially when the government is more left leaning. So far it has never gotten of the ground, as the issues around assigning value and private/corporate split to the points has been seen as more effort than value gained. And they have never reached the point to get any airline to hand over the names of the members. However, if Sweden manages to set this up on a workable manner, it will not be long before the rest of Scandinavia, and possibly more countries will follow. |
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