[flexie]

Danish tax payers have lost around EUR 1.7B. That's around EUR 300 for every Dane. Still a lot, but a lot less than they claim.

I have two takes on this: 1: The Danish tax authorities have been extremely careless in the administration of the rules. They didn't even check that the people owned the shares they claimed to own. Virtually all of it was approved by one employee with zero oversight. 2: Different international banks have either known what was happening, and willingly enabled it, or should have known. Money laundry rules oblige them to check when such giant sums flow in and out of such few accounts.

[skummetmaelk]

The Danish tax disaster has a long history beginning in the early 00's when it was decided to reform and digitalize the tax collection. Contractors were brought in to develop a nation-wide tax collection system that would reduce the cost of collecting tax. This system was to take many years to develop and a plan was made to gradually lay off employees in the tax collection agency as the system was made ready so that there would not be a massive excess of employees when the system was released.

Of course the system was delayed.. by years... And there were fewer experienced employees available because the lay-off policy was to let people retire as normal, but just stop hiring.

When the system finally was released, the tax collection service was in dire straits. Layoffs had continued, experience was lost. Employees were doing the work of 3 people without really knowing how and having noone to ask for advice. To top it off, it was politically decided to decentralise the tax collection service and split the offices into many small units across the country. Causing even more people to quit.

This isn't the end though. The system was released all right, but it was quickly discovered that it was making illegal tax collections from citizens due to faulty property evaluation. Attempts were made to fix the system, but it was SCRAPPED AFTER TWO YEARS.

Now we are left with a broken tax collection agency which cannot perform its duties and lacks manpower to verify tax claims from companies knowingly exploiting the situation.

[Svip]

The worst thing is that our politicians seems to be mostly inclined to say they are disappointed whenever a new scandal erupts, and then nothing happens. If only they would have been as forceful in response as the new Social Agency scandal (even if 15+ years too late), when it came to the Tax Agency.

Then again, since it seems like most voters don't really give a damn, I guess it's politically expedient to just not care.

[village-idiot]

If your politicians are anything like mine, chances are they’re exploiting the system themselves.

[skummetmaelk]

In this case it's less politicians exploiting the system themselves and more due to both sides of parliament having been part of the process. If either side criticized the other it would come right back to them.

[mercer]

I vaguely recall Holland went through a similar process and is facing similar problems. Could the Dutchies in the know here on HN shed some light on this?

[FranzFerdiNaN]

Our tax agency offered a really good package to people who voluntarily left the organization, sometimes over €100.000 euro. the idea was to lose around 4500 people in 7 years this way, but the package was so attractive about 6500 people immediately took it.

The entire idea was really not implemented well and now the tax agency needs like 4000 new people to replace the ones they didn’t want to lose. Lots of senior knowledge is gone and the entire agency is struggling doing its main tasks, resulting in hundreds of millions of missed taxes.

[kartan]

> They didn't even check that the people owned the shares they claimed to own

Yes. But people hates bureaucracy.

A common answer is'why do I need to present another document in the tax office?'

At least now Danish citizens have an answer. 'to avoid losing 1.7B'

bureaucracy is a remedy to a problem. It can be done right or wrong, but it's not bad by itself.

[caf]

They should have the companies themselves submit their share register as of the in-dividend date to the tax authority (which the company has to know anyway, since you can be damn sure that they're not paying dividends to people who didn't own the shares!). No register no refunds.