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196 points RapperWhoMadeIt | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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arghwhat ◴[] 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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dtquad ◴[] No.43494071[source]
This isn't true and sounds like something written by terminally online reddit libertarians.

The Black Swan documentary is primarily about sleazy private sector actors in Denmark. The only remotely state affiliated individuals in the documentary is a business man who was a former small city council member and a bankruptcy lawyer who has previously contracted for Danish government organizations. The system worked fine and the Danish equivalent of the FBI, the NSK, already had ongoing cases of investigations into a lot of the uncovered material.

The only "common" tax fraud in Denmark is when a house needs some minor fixing before being put on sale. Many Danish people will pay their friend's friend to do it for them "under the table" and not as formally contracted and taxed work. This is becoming increasingly harder.

However this is far from the massive systemic corruption in many other countries.

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1. DanielHB ◴[] No.43494435[source]
Sweden (and I assume Denmark) has a lot of tax-dodging[1] (just like any other country). The tax code is complex (but not nearly US-complex) and gives plenty of ways to avoid paying tax[2].

But at least the tax agency seems quite keen on investigating abuses. I remember Klarna has to pay a huge fine for trying because of trying to abuse tax loopholes a few years ago.

[1] I define tax dodging as using legal tax loopholes in order to pay less tax. A lot of those tax rules are not even complicated, they were just set up with a specific type of person in mind to let them pay less tax.

[2] The most popular ones that middle class Swedes use are delaying paying property capital gains, 30% tax deduction on loan interest payments, special rules for private pension and using ISK investment accounts (which allow you to avoid capital gains). None of them are illegal, just heavily favor some demographics. It is not that hard for a upper middle class Swede to avoid the maximum 56% income tax rate and the 30% capital gains tax.