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A filmmaker and a crooked lawyer shattered Denmark's self-image

(www.theguardian.com)
196 points RapperWhoMadeIt | 5 comments | 27 Mar 25 13:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.418s | source
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arghwhat ◴[27 Mar 25 13:28 UTC] No.43493412[source]▶
Black Swan was a big deal, but this article massively overstates the average Dane's faith in the system. The welfare state is certainly not reverred as a religion, and the current state of it is always a hot discussion topic with pulls in either direction.

Unlike what this article suggests, tax fraud is also relatively common (one would have to be rather daft to assume that a country with such absurdly high taxation did not have tax evasion as a key pastime - although probably not as aggressively as in places like the US), and while heavily frowned upon certainly not seen as the highest form of crime as this article suggests. Well, maybe if you ask the tax agency and the political parties pushing for ever more welfare, both of which push heavily for a cashless society where all financial transactions are fully trackable by them, but I think most would place tax evasion quite far down on the list of significant crimes.

I would instead say that the average Dane is carefree about these issues, not because they are trusting or believe their system is worth religious following, but because the issues experienced there feels quite minor compared to what seems to happen elsewhere in the world. When your concept of a significant natural disaster is a flooded basement, you tend to not worry that much about what happens locally.

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1. MaxHoppersGhost ◴[27 Mar 25 14:11 UTC] No.43493869[source]▶
> one would have to be rather daft to assume that a country with such absurdly high taxation did not have tax evasion as a key pastime - although probably not as aggressively as in places like the US

The US has lower taxes so by your logic we would have less evasion. Unless you’re making a judgement on Americans.

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2. scandox ◴[27 Mar 25 14:16 UTC] No.43493907[source]▶
I think the common perception is that Americans are more ideologically committed to tax avoidance whereas Europeans are more viscerally tempted by tax evasion?
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3. arghwhat ◴[27 Mar 25 16:20 UTC] No.43495185[source]▶
I am making a judgement on the US corporate culture and population within it, yes. It has far more loopholes that remain open and actively used than Denmark does.

Denmark does its very best to make it either a pain in the arse or impossible to use company property in any way that could be seen as having private value. Did you drive home in your company car? Then get ready to be privately taxed of its full market value and for the company to get a bill for the VAT. Did you take a private phone call on a company phone? Then you have to pay the "free phone" tax and the company VAT of the phone. Did you buy furniture for your home office, but without having the home office locked to physically separate it from your regular home, or did you put a comfortable chair in there so it its private value becomes ambiguous? Not a valid company purchase.

Weird US tricks like getting paid in stock and taking loans with that stock as collateral, with the resulting liability cancelling out remaining tax also don't work there. The common stuff would be, say, restaurant owners inexplicably having really low private food expenditure, or really low revenue on paper for how popular the place is.

I suspect the reason is that the US government has pressure from lobbyists to maintain the status quo, while the DK government has pressure to claw in taxes to cover their sky high spending ambitions.

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4. StefanBatory ◴[27 Mar 25 17:40 UTC] No.43495950[source]▶
Not being an American I've always had similar impressions. That taxes in USA are hated way more than anywhere else.
5. murderfs ◴[27 Mar 25 19:51 UTC] No.43497412[source]▶
> Weird US tricks like getting paid in stock and taking loans with that stock as collateral, with the resulting liability cancelling out remaining tax also don't work there.

That's not how the U.S. trick works, it's taking loans with the stock as collateral in order to defer realizing the capital gains while still being able to spend the money. It's no different from just taking out an unsecured loan, it's just that banks are more willing to give you a larger balance/less usurious rates if it's secured by something.