WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden (WITS) no 3/2012 (March)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Overseas property tax cheats who appear to be living beyond their means are the target of a team of 200 Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) investigators. HMRC is warning wealthy investors with land and property abroad that they are combing their tax returns to make sure they have declared income and proceeds of sale.
A task force of accountants, investigators and finance professionals is collecting information from government agencies, the internet and foreign tax authorities and have harnessed sophisticated risk assessment techniques to pinpoint high net worth individuals not paying enough income tax and capital gains tax. Data-mining is the main weapon against tax evaders with internet spiders - computer programs that crawl the web looking for information in the same way search engines scan web sites. The spiders can sift vast amounts of information - like tracing a property owner from foreign tax authority data to match with information about property to let on holiday web sites.
A similar hunt for landlords and property owners cheating tax is concentrating on the Land Registry,housing benefit payments, the electoral roll and tax returns.Forex and commodity traders are also under investigation by the tax man.
Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, David Gauke, said: “The government is committed to tackling tax evasion and avoidance across all areas of the economy. That is why we allocated £917m to HMRC to reduce the tax gap over the next four years. The new team is part of that investment. With HMRC’s increased capability and expertise, and its increasing success in tackling evasion both at home and offshore, the message is clear: there is no hiding place for tax cheats.”
Stockholm 12 March 2012
peter@sundgren.net
tisdag 13 mars 2012
Refund of withholding tax on dividends paid to foreign investment funds within the EU.
WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden (WITS) no 3/2012 March
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 15 February the Tax Appeals Court (kammarrätten) in Sundsvall delivered 16 judgments ordering a refund of Swedish dividend withholding tax (kupongskatt) to foreign investment funds situated in the Community.
Swedish investment funds may deduct distributions made to their investors which of course is an incentive to make such distributions reducing the corporate tax base of the fund. Dividends paid to foreign investment funds, however, do not enjoy the same deduction and are also liable to Swedish dividend withholding tax at 30 percent or applicable treaty rate, in most cases 15%. Such funds are thus treated in a less favourable way than Swedish investment funds under the same conditions. The Court has thus ruled that the Swedish tax rules are unjustifiably in breach of the EU principles of free movement of capital and consequently that the taxes paid should be refunded.
Somewhat surprising is that the Court has not applied for an advance ruling by the European court of Justice.
Still pending are applications for refund of Swedish dividend taxes paid by investment funds outside the EU/EES and foreign pension funds.
It is expected that the ruling by the Sundsvall court will be appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court of justice. If it is upheld and considering that foreign investment- and pension funds are extremely big investors on the Swedish stock exchange and that dividend distributions from Swedish corporations have been very large in the last couple of years, the combined tax refunds comprising the five past years will be quite enormous. We are talking of billions of Swedish crowns.
Stockholm 12 March 2012
peter@sundgren.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 15 February the Tax Appeals Court (kammarrätten) in Sundsvall delivered 16 judgments ordering a refund of Swedish dividend withholding tax (kupongskatt) to foreign investment funds situated in the Community.
Swedish investment funds may deduct distributions made to their investors which of course is an incentive to make such distributions reducing the corporate tax base of the fund. Dividends paid to foreign investment funds, however, do not enjoy the same deduction and are also liable to Swedish dividend withholding tax at 30 percent or applicable treaty rate, in most cases 15%. Such funds are thus treated in a less favourable way than Swedish investment funds under the same conditions. The Court has thus ruled that the Swedish tax rules are unjustifiably in breach of the EU principles of free movement of capital and consequently that the taxes paid should be refunded.
Somewhat surprising is that the Court has not applied for an advance ruling by the European court of Justice.
Still pending are applications for refund of Swedish dividend taxes paid by investment funds outside the EU/EES and foreign pension funds.
It is expected that the ruling by the Sundsvall court will be appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court of justice. If it is upheld and considering that foreign investment- and pension funds are extremely big investors on the Swedish stock exchange and that dividend distributions from Swedish corporations have been very large in the last couple of years, the combined tax refunds comprising the five past years will be quite enormous. We are talking of billions of Swedish crowns.
Stockholm 12 March 2012
peter@sundgren.net
Interpretation and application of tax treaties – graduation thesis (examensarbete 30 högskolepoäng))
WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden (WITS) no 3/2012 (March)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over a period of professional life of about thirty years I have devoted a lot of attention to the study and analysis of international taxation in general and of double taxation treaties in particular. In terms of numbers of articles, reports and papers written on these subjects I would suggest that I am second to none in Sweden.
There is of course still a lot to be concerned about regarding our Swedish tax treaties. This was indeed highlighted recently when the Swedish National Audit Office (Riksrevisionen) and the Federation of Sweish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) – simultaneously actually – critisized the legislator and tax treaty negotiator for having neglected our treaty network for such a long time. Another reason for concern is the deploring track record of our Supreme Administrative (Tax) Court regarding treaty interpretation and treaty application matters. See my report hereon from 7 January 2011 at www.petersundgren.blogspot.com. This became especially apparent in the passionate debate that has taken place over the last couple of years regarding the treaty override cases RÅ 2008 ref. 24 (the OMX case) and RÅ 2010 ref. 112 (the Greece case) which have seriously tarnished the Court's reputation regarding treaty application matters. Professor Gustaf Lindencrona, Sweden's leading authority on international taxation, despairingly noted that the Court had ”lost its international dimension” and all one could do was to set one's hopes to the next generation of Supreme Court justices.
Therefore it is very satisfactory to learn that the interest in tax treaty matters is kept alive in that generation, more specifically at the university in Lund where Edina Catic (in June 2011) graduated with a remarkable thesis on ”Interpretation and Application of Tax Treaties in the Light of Recent Court Case Developments” (Tolkning och tillämpning av dubbelbeskattningsavtal i ljuset av den senaste tidens rättsutveckling). It is a very comprehensive paper covering no less 118 pages and can be accessed at ( http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1977031&fileOId=1977133). The allusion to ”recent court case developments” is of course a reference to the treaty override debacle. In a restrained understatement she concludes that the Court's views on treaty override may yet give rise to future problems.
With regard to treaty interpretation in Sweden we are in the very fortunate position that the Court on two occasions, RÅ 1987 ref. 162, ”the subject-to-remittance-case” regarding the UK treaty and RÅ 1994 ref. 84, ”the Luxembourg case, have specifically addressed this matter and firmly established that interpretation shall be conducted in accordance with the international law principles on this matter laid down in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties where all measures - with a strong purposive (teleolocical) approach - should be adopted in order to reveal the intentions of the Contracting States. The 1987 subject-to-remittance case, focussing on article 3.2. of the OECD Model treaty regarding the inerpretation of terms not specifically interpreted in the treaty, constitutes nothing less than an interpretation of this interpretation article! The prevailing methods for interpretation of domestic Swedish laws, disfavouring teleological overtures, and giving the terms of a treaty the meaning they may have under domestic tax laws should be demoted to a very last resort method. Ms Catic points this out very clearly.
It should, however, be underlined that the Court's recent treaty override decisions have in no way changed this attitude to treaty interpretation. For the simple reason that treaty override has nothing to do with treaty interpretation. Treaty override is a matter of treaty application addressing the problem of which text that should prevail in determining tax liability, the treaty or domestic (Swedish) tax law, whereas, on the other hand, treaty interpretation is an intellectual process to determine the meaning of the relevant treaty provision. This distinction between treaty application and treaty interpretation by certain commentators, especially Professor Mattias Dahlberg in his 2008 article in Skattenytt pages 482-489, has been misunderstood. In the pertinent OMX treaty override case the Court makes it quite plain that the Swedish domestic (CFC) rule prevails. Period. And that there is no need of any analysis whatsoever of the treaty. So how can one talk of interpretation of a treaty which has not be analysed?1 Consequently, I repeat, treaty override is a matter dealing with treaty application not treaty interpretation.
Maybe therefore Ms Catic should have restricted the title of her thesis to ”Tax Treaty Application in the light of recent Court Case Developments”. But her paper on the other hand discloses that she has a very good grip on treaty interpretation matters (too).
As mentioned above, I have produced a lot of work on treaty application and treaty interpretation. In the recent past especially on treaty override. Here follows a non-exhaustive list of articles which in one way or the other relate to by Ms Catic's work:
Title
Om tolkning av dubbelbeskattningsavtal IUR*)- Meddelande 10-11/1988
Skatterättslig bosättning/hemvist (rättsfall) IUR-Meddelande 2/1996
(Kenya 1 och 2)
Labuan/Treaty override IUR-INFO 3/2002
Labuan Island/treaty override/one more time WITS**) 2/2004 (skatter.se)
Taxation of Cross-Border Partnerships WITS 1/2005 (skatter.se)
Interpretation of Tax Treaties authenticated in two or more languages – a case study. Svensk Skattetidning 5/2006
Treaty override WITS 4/2008 (skatter.se)
Försäljning av aktier efter utflyttning Del 1 WITS 5/2009 (skatter.se)
(Thailandsmålet)
Legalitetsprincipen och skatteavtal WITS 4/2009 (skatter.se)
Normhierarki och regelkonkurrens WITS 3/2010 (skatter.se)
Regeringsrätten backar i treatyoverridefrågan – delvis
WITS 1/2011 (petersundgren.blogspot.com)
Vidare angående intern skatterätt och skatteavtal.
(Kommentarer till Ann-Sophie Sallanders artikel
i Svensk Skattetidning 2010 (sid 177-204) ”I kölvattnet
av RÅ 2008 ref.24”). WITS 2/2011(petersundgren.blogspot.com)
Mail till Mathias Dahlberg ang. treaty override, WITS 3 /2011(petersundgren.blogspot.com)
A scientific study of the taxation of 'emigrating'
capital gains. (Utflyttningsbeskattning av kapitalökningar) WITS 4/2011 (petersundgren.blogspot.com)
*) IUR = Institutet för Utländsk Rätt
**) WITS = WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden.
These articles ”have been comprehensively discussed” but have not qualified for reference purposes in Ms Catic's thesis, declares Professor of Fiscal Law at the Lund University and Ms Catic's tutor (handledare) Mats Tjernberg.
Stockholm 12 March 2012.
peter@sundgren.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over a period of professional life of about thirty years I have devoted a lot of attention to the study and analysis of international taxation in general and of double taxation treaties in particular. In terms of numbers of articles, reports and papers written on these subjects I would suggest that I am second to none in Sweden.
There is of course still a lot to be concerned about regarding our Swedish tax treaties. This was indeed highlighted recently when the Swedish National Audit Office (Riksrevisionen) and the Federation of Sweish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) – simultaneously actually – critisized the legislator and tax treaty negotiator for having neglected our treaty network for such a long time. Another reason for concern is the deploring track record of our Supreme Administrative (Tax) Court regarding treaty interpretation and treaty application matters. See my report hereon from 7 January 2011 at www.petersundgren.blogspot.com. This became especially apparent in the passionate debate that has taken place over the last couple of years regarding the treaty override cases RÅ 2008 ref. 24 (the OMX case) and RÅ 2010 ref. 112 (the Greece case) which have seriously tarnished the Court's reputation regarding treaty application matters. Professor Gustaf Lindencrona, Sweden's leading authority on international taxation, despairingly noted that the Court had ”lost its international dimension” and all one could do was to set one's hopes to the next generation of Supreme Court justices.
Therefore it is very satisfactory to learn that the interest in tax treaty matters is kept alive in that generation, more specifically at the university in Lund where Edina Catic (in June 2011) graduated with a remarkable thesis on ”Interpretation and Application of Tax Treaties in the Light of Recent Court Case Developments” (Tolkning och tillämpning av dubbelbeskattningsavtal i ljuset av den senaste tidens rättsutveckling). It is a very comprehensive paper covering no less 118 pages and can be accessed at ( http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1977031&fileOId=1977133). The allusion to ”recent court case developments” is of course a reference to the treaty override debacle. In a restrained understatement she concludes that the Court's views on treaty override may yet give rise to future problems.
With regard to treaty interpretation in Sweden we are in the very fortunate position that the Court on two occasions, RÅ 1987 ref. 162, ”the subject-to-remittance-case” regarding the UK treaty and RÅ 1994 ref. 84, ”the Luxembourg case, have specifically addressed this matter and firmly established that interpretation shall be conducted in accordance with the international law principles on this matter laid down in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties where all measures - with a strong purposive (teleolocical) approach - should be adopted in order to reveal the intentions of the Contracting States. The 1987 subject-to-remittance case, focussing on article 3.2. of the OECD Model treaty regarding the inerpretation of terms not specifically interpreted in the treaty, constitutes nothing less than an interpretation of this interpretation article! The prevailing methods for interpretation of domestic Swedish laws, disfavouring teleological overtures, and giving the terms of a treaty the meaning they may have under domestic tax laws should be demoted to a very last resort method. Ms Catic points this out very clearly.
It should, however, be underlined that the Court's recent treaty override decisions have in no way changed this attitude to treaty interpretation. For the simple reason that treaty override has nothing to do with treaty interpretation. Treaty override is a matter of treaty application addressing the problem of which text that should prevail in determining tax liability, the treaty or domestic (Swedish) tax law, whereas, on the other hand, treaty interpretation is an intellectual process to determine the meaning of the relevant treaty provision. This distinction between treaty application and treaty interpretation by certain commentators, especially Professor Mattias Dahlberg in his 2008 article in Skattenytt pages 482-489, has been misunderstood. In the pertinent OMX treaty override case the Court makes it quite plain that the Swedish domestic (CFC) rule prevails. Period. And that there is no need of any analysis whatsoever of the treaty. So how can one talk of interpretation of a treaty which has not be analysed?1 Consequently, I repeat, treaty override is a matter dealing with treaty application not treaty interpretation.
Maybe therefore Ms Catic should have restricted the title of her thesis to ”Tax Treaty Application in the light of recent Court Case Developments”. But her paper on the other hand discloses that she has a very good grip on treaty interpretation matters (too).
As mentioned above, I have produced a lot of work on treaty application and treaty interpretation. In the recent past especially on treaty override. Here follows a non-exhaustive list of articles which in one way or the other relate to by Ms Catic's work:
Title
Om tolkning av dubbelbeskattningsavtal IUR*)- Meddelande 10-11/1988
Skatterättslig bosättning/hemvist (rättsfall) IUR-Meddelande 2/1996
(Kenya 1 och 2)
Labuan/Treaty override IUR-INFO 3/2002
Labuan Island/treaty override/one more time WITS**) 2/2004 (skatter.se)
Taxation of Cross-Border Partnerships WITS 1/2005 (skatter.se)
Interpretation of Tax Treaties authenticated in two or more languages – a case study. Svensk Skattetidning 5/2006
Treaty override WITS 4/2008 (skatter.se)
Försäljning av aktier efter utflyttning Del 1 WITS 5/2009 (skatter.se)
(Thailandsmålet)
Legalitetsprincipen och skatteavtal WITS 4/2009 (skatter.se)
Normhierarki och regelkonkurrens WITS 3/2010 (skatter.se)
Regeringsrätten backar i treatyoverridefrågan – delvis
WITS 1/2011 (petersundgren.blogspot.com)
Vidare angående intern skatterätt och skatteavtal.
(Kommentarer till Ann-Sophie Sallanders artikel
i Svensk Skattetidning 2010 (sid 177-204) ”I kölvattnet
av RÅ 2008 ref.24”). WITS 2/2011(petersundgren.blogspot.com)
Mail till Mathias Dahlberg ang. treaty override, WITS 3 /2011(petersundgren.blogspot.com)
A scientific study of the taxation of 'emigrating'
capital gains. (Utflyttningsbeskattning av kapitalökningar) WITS 4/2011 (petersundgren.blogspot.com)
*) IUR = Institutet för Utländsk Rätt
**) WITS = WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden.
These articles ”have been comprehensively discussed” but have not qualified for reference purposes in Ms Catic's thesis, declares Professor of Fiscal Law at the Lund University and Ms Catic's tutor (handledare) Mats Tjernberg.
Stockholm 12 March 2012.
peter@sundgren.net
måndag 5 mars 2012
Ingvar Kamprad's Liechtenstein foundation to pay tax in Sweden (and 39 other countries)?
WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden (WITS) no 2/2012
---------------------------------------------------------------
By Peter Sundgren
In 1991 at the world congress of the International Fiscal Association (IFA) in Barcelona I chaired a panel discussion group on the topic of tax treaty shopping. And inspired hereby I wrote an article on this matter in 1992 for the Law Review of the Institute of Foreign Law in Stockholm. IUR-meddelande 6/1992.
A key provision in articles 10 – 12 regarding dividends, interest and royalties of all tax treaties based on the OECD's Model Tax Convention is the beneficial ownership rule discharging the source state's obligation to provide treaty benefits on payments to recipients in the residence state. In the wake of the The Conduit Companies Report adopted by the OECD Council in 1986, the problems involved in these situations gave rise to an intense discussion in Barcelona. But it is of course a topic which since then has given rise to much consideration. Most importantly the OECD's Fiscal Committee is presently reviewing the matter and has recently (29 April 2011) issued a discusion draft under the title ”Clarification of the Meaning of ”Beneficial Owner” in the OECD Model Convention ”. The final report and the new commentaries are expected to be introduced in the 2014 version of the OECD Model.
As it appears Mr Ingvar Kamprad, the legendary (and charmingly self-belittling) founder of the worldwide IKEA empire (and ranking number 5 on Fortunes list of the world's billionaires), may have paid little attention to my article on treaty shopping and the problems involving the beneficial ownership test when he set up what is now considered his notorious Interogo Foundation in Liechtenstein.
This foundation, (like all other Liechtenstein foundations), has been shrouded in complete secrecy.1) Until, that is, just about a year ago when a probe conducted by a team of investigative journalists from the Swedish news organisation SVT (Sveriges Television) and Smålandsposten 2) revealed that Mr Kamprad and his family controlled Interogo and owned the IKEA trademark which is licensed to IKEA stores around the world. For the use of this trademark every store pays a 3 percent (tax deductible) royalty on their turnover to Inter Ikea Holding B.V., an indirectly, (through Inter Ikea S.A in Luxembourg), wholly owned Dutch company. By means of what appears to be a back-to-back royalty agreement between Inter Ikea Holding and Interogo – but there could be additional agreements and companies interposed in this stratagem – 70 percent of the royalties are subsequently passed on to Interogo.
Mr Kamprad, who is wellknown for his international tax planning strategies, has issued a spirited defence of his business structure, which he said was designed to preserve IKEA's long-term independence and financial strength. Referring to IKEA's use of financial havens such as Liechtenstein, the 85 year old Swede argued that ”tax efficiency” is a natural part of the company's low-cost culture. ”We have always viewed taxes as a cost, equal to any other cost of doing business”, he said in a statement, while insisting ”that IKEA paid taxes in every country in which it operates and complied fully with all laws and regulations”. (According to one report in 2005, out of earnings of several hundred million dollars, IKEA paid a total of 3.5% in tax.) 3)
In a recent statement to Dagens Industri, Mr Hans Gydell, the CEO of Inter Ikea Holding, has said that the ownership of the IKEA trademark has been placed for all eternity in the tax paradise Liechtenstein, ”and even if Mr Kamprad would so wish it would be impossible to break this up and transfer ownership elsewhere. It was precisely for the purpose of protecting the IKEA concept and trademark for the future that this very special and stable ownership arrangement was chosen and I have never heard him regret this decision.” According to a recent article in Smålandsposten (25 February 2012) which is based on an interview with Mr Kamprad, who is usually quite reluctant to give interviews, explains that there is a quite flexible kind of foundation in Liechtenstein allowing its statutes to be changed with short notice. For example, Interogo had recently changed its rules regarding the nomination of its board members. Until the end of 2010 changes of board member ship was determined by a trust in Canada (Appo Trust in Ontario) 4) which is presently being dismantled. All that has been known about this trust was that it was controlled by the Kamprad family. Smålandsposten and SVT have unsuccessivly tried to get official information hereabout but it appears that Appo Trust is of a kind that does not require registration in Canada. Today the appointment of board membership in Interogo is carried out by a special administrative council (Stiftungsrat) consisting of Ingvar Kamprad, Mathias Kamprad, Alfred Wiederkehr member of the boards of the Ingka and Ikea Foundations, Per Ludvidsson chairman of the board of the Ikea Group, Hans Gydell, board member of the Ikea Group, Johannes Stenberg personal assistent to Ingvar Kamprad, and Urs Wickihalder, Partner Bratchi, Wiedermeir & Buob (Zurich) and member of the Council of the Association of Swiss Grantmaking Foundations. Upon resignation from the board Ingvar Kamprad shall appoint his successor. This structure will remain also upon Invar Kamprad leaving the organisation. The information is somewhat nebulous as the statutes also provide that the Kamprad family is entitled to three members of the council and that four shall be non Kamprad family members. Upon the resignation of Ingvar Kamprad every council member including those of the Kamprad family shall appoint his successor but the Kamprad family can veto such decisions. The board of Interogo which is supervised by the administrative council consists of Herbert Oberhuber and Johannes Burger, partners of Marxer & Partner lawfirm in Liechtenstein. They appoint the board members of Inter Ikea Holding annually. The chairman of the board of this company is the wellknown Swedish Tax Law Professor Göran Grosskopf. In addition the company also has a Supervisory Board chaired by Mr Kamprad. Some of the statutes of Interogo remain secret. Paragraph 12 is quite clear on this point: ”These statutes including specific changes thereof and all other factual and legal circumstances affecting the Foundation may not be disclosed to outsiders, in particular not to foreign administrative bodies.”
Together with the legal ownership of the IKEA trademark and the hundred percent share holding in Inter Ikea Holding B.V. as reported above, it appears that Mr Kamprad and his family have total control of the financial affairs of the Interogo Group 5)
For tax purposes, the benefits of this arrangement is that the Netherlands has tax treaties with (probably) most of the countries where the IKEA stores are situated, treaties which reduce royalty taxes in most cases to nil percent in the source state instead of the quite considerable taxes which usually are imposed hereon under domestic rules of these countries. Also, which indicates that the choice of Netherlands for the establishment of Inter Ikea Holding is not haphazard, this country under its domestic tax regime does not impose any source tax on roylties paid to either Liechtenstein or any other countries. Thus, the money, apart from an arm's lenght profit margin being taxed in the Netherlands, winds up completely tax free in the hands of the Interogo foundation. And there is of course no tax in Liechtenstein.
If on the other hand the royalties had been paid directly from the IKEA stores to Liechtenstein there would allways be full domestic source taxes on the royalties because there is no country that has a tax treaty with Liechtenstein. (In Sweden source taxes on outgoing royalties are imposed in this case at the corporate tax rate of 26.3%.) To use the usual tax lingo Interogo has thus ”shopped” the Netherlands' treaties concluded with the IKEA store countries. Or, in other words, Interogo has used the Netherlands and Inter Ikea Holding as a ”shopping bag” for tax purposes for collecting its world wide royalties.
However, which has already been mentioned above, there is an important condition in the royalty clause of most tax treaties prescribing that the source state is obliged to waive its source tax only if the recipient in the residence state (the Netherlands) is the beneficial owner of the (royalty) income. In French ”bénéficiaire effectif”, in German ”Nutzungsberechtiger”. In Sweden´s tax treaties the obligation to reduce the source tax requires that the recipient ”har rätt till royaltyn”. If therefore, when interpreting this term one would conclude that the Interogo Foundation in Liechtenstein and not Inter Ikea Holding in the Netherlands should be considered the beneficial owner of the royalties the benefits under the article are to be denied and the source state can go ahead and collect from Inter Ikea Holding (not Interogo as suggested in the title of this article) its regular domestic source taxes on royalties.
At the introduction of the concept of beneficial owner in the 1977 Commentaries to the Model Convention the only clarification of this term that was given was that intermediaries such as an agent or nominee did not qualify as beneficial owners and were thus excluded from treaty benefits on receipts of royalties, (dividends and interest).
Ten years later in the Conduit Company report it was further emphasized that beneficial ownership should also be read in the context of its purpose, namely in the effort of the OECD to deal with tax avoidance. The Committee on Fiscal Affairs had expressed its concern about the improper use of tax conventions by persons acting through a legal entity with the main or sole purpose of obtaining treaty benefits which would not be available directly to such a person. In the words of the Report, it ”deals with the most important situation of this kind, where a company situated in a treaty country is acting as a conduit for channeling income economically accruing to a person in another State who is thereby able to take advantage 'improperly' of the benefits provided by a tax treaty. This situation is often referred to as 'treaty shopping'. The 'conduit company' which is characteristic of such schemes is usually a corporation but may also be a partnership, trust or similar entity.”
The key word in this statement is that the income channeled through the conduit company economically accrues to a person in another State rather than to the conduit company. Usually, according to the Report, (but which, as explained above, is not the case in the Interogo/Inter Ikea Holding scheme), the assets and rights that give rise to the (dividends, interest, or) royalties have been transferred to the conduit company enabling it to obtain the treaty benefits.
In the new 2011 OECD discussion draft emphasis is further placed on the ability of the recipient to have ”the full right to use and enjoy the income received unconstrained by any contractual or legal obligation to pass the the payment received to another person.” Moreover, and quite importantly, under section 4.4. of the draft, the OECD points out that the fact that the recipient of royalties is considered to be the beneficial owner of the royalties does not preclude the possibility to deny the benefits of the treaty in cases of abuse of the provisions described in the Commentaries to paragraph 1 of the Model Treaty. These include specific treaty anti-abuse provisions, generel anti-abuse rules and substance-over-form or economic substance approaches.
As can be gleaned from the above analysis about the meaning of beneficial ownership the determination hereof is quite a complicated and multifaceted affair and, which is important to mention, can be established only upon a thorough investigation of the facts and circumstances of each and every case. It is therefore not possible to give a final answer hereto with regard to the Interogo/Inter Ikea Holding arrangement. It is therefore justified that the statement made in the title of this paper is followed by a questionmark.
The head of the legal department of The Swedish Tax Administration Mr Tomas Algotsson has declared (Dagens Industri 27 January 2011) that he cannot say if a tax inquiry will be initiated against IKEA. He points out that he can only handle the Swedish legislation in this regard but not the tax consequences of the foreign operations of the company. Regarding the 3 percent royalty payments he finds that this must be determined by the rules of the treatment of intercompany payments. This arm's length problem is, however, a completely different issue specifically dealt with in paragraph 4 of article 12 in the Sweden-The Netherlands tax treaty. Mr Algotsson's statement thus indicates that no attention seems to have been paid by the Tax Administration to the beneficial ownership question laid down in paragraph 1 of article 12. Probably because of the secrecy that has surrounded Interogo and that its business structure has thus not been understood.
As implied above a determination of the beneficial ownership concept is a very difficult one and, as far as is known, it has never been tested by any tax court in Sweden. There are several reasons, however, why a probe into these matters would be interesting in the Interogo/Inter Ikea Holding setup. Firstly, and most importantly, the information that has surfaced about Interogo and the royalty payments in the last couple of months, albeit somewhat conflicting, is of such a scope and nature that a test of the beneficial ownership concept in this case is indeed warranted and could also in the process shed light on this elusive tax treaty problem in general. Secondly, an investigation of this kind could prove to be of enormous fiscal interest not only to Sweden but to all countries that have IKEA stores. Mr Kamprad has confirmed that Interogo has amassed a fortune of about 12 billion US dollars, (corresponding to about 100 billion (miljarder) Swedish crowns) in Liechtenstein. IKEA's homepage reports that there are 334 stores – and counting – in 40 different countries. The number of stores in Sweden is about 17. According to Wikipedia the combined turnover in 2007 of IKEA was 212 billion SEK. 3 percent thereof amounts to 6.36 billion SEK. The loss of tax revenue by the Swedish treasury alone from the royalty scheme is estimated at 100 million SEK annually (Dagens Industi 26 January 2011). Thirdly, it should be mentioned that Sweden has recently negotiated an agreement with Liechtenstein for exchange of information for tax purposes and that therefore it should now be possible for the Swedish tax authorities to obtain full information about Interogo.
The development of an investigation of this kind would no doubt be closely followed by the tax authorities in the 39 other countries that have tax treaties with The Netherlands with a beneficial ownership clause.
Stockholm 5 March 2012
peter@sundgren.net
Footnotes:
1.A Swedish translation of the statutes of Interogo are available at http://svt.se/content/1/c8/02/30/43/75/Stadgar_Interogo_Svenska.pdf. Noteworthy is the fact that there are no references therein to Mr Kamprad or IKEA whatsoever.
2. Bosse Vikingsson and Kenneth Gehrman, reporters at Smålandsposten, have been nominated to the journalistic award The Golden Spade for their unearthing of the Interogo scheme.
3The “Berne Declaration”, a non-profit non governmental Swiss organization that promotes corporate responsibility, has formally criticized IKEA for its tax avoidance strategies. In 2007, the Berne Declaration nominated IKEA for one of its Public Eye "awards", which highlight corporate irresponsibility and are announced during theWorld Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
4. See paragraph 7 of the statutes of Interogo.
5. It should, however, be mentioned that this sharply contrasts with the information provided on IKEAs homepage which declares that the world wide IKEA concept is owned by Ikea Systems B.V. in The Netherlands and that the IKEA group and all franchisees make payments to the said company for the right to use the IKEA System and its continuing development and improvement. Also pointed out, and quite surprisingly, is that the relationship between Inter Ikea Systems B.V. and its franchisees is based on a business agreement between independent parties, (which for tax purposes would suggest that the royalty payments are not subject to arm's length tax considerations).
---------------------------------------------------------------
By Peter Sundgren
In 1991 at the world congress of the International Fiscal Association (IFA) in Barcelona I chaired a panel discussion group on the topic of tax treaty shopping. And inspired hereby I wrote an article on this matter in 1992 for the Law Review of the Institute of Foreign Law in Stockholm. IUR-meddelande 6/1992.
A key provision in articles 10 – 12 regarding dividends, interest and royalties of all tax treaties based on the OECD's Model Tax Convention is the beneficial ownership rule discharging the source state's obligation to provide treaty benefits on payments to recipients in the residence state. In the wake of the The Conduit Companies Report adopted by the OECD Council in 1986, the problems involved in these situations gave rise to an intense discussion in Barcelona. But it is of course a topic which since then has given rise to much consideration. Most importantly the OECD's Fiscal Committee is presently reviewing the matter and has recently (29 April 2011) issued a discusion draft under the title ”Clarification of the Meaning of ”Beneficial Owner” in the OECD Model Convention ”. The final report and the new commentaries are expected to be introduced in the 2014 version of the OECD Model.
As it appears Mr Ingvar Kamprad, the legendary (and charmingly self-belittling) founder of the worldwide IKEA empire (and ranking number 5 on Fortunes list of the world's billionaires), may have paid little attention to my article on treaty shopping and the problems involving the beneficial ownership test when he set up what is now considered his notorious Interogo Foundation in Liechtenstein.
This foundation, (like all other Liechtenstein foundations), has been shrouded in complete secrecy.1) Until, that is, just about a year ago when a probe conducted by a team of investigative journalists from the Swedish news organisation SVT (Sveriges Television) and Smålandsposten 2) revealed that Mr Kamprad and his family controlled Interogo and owned the IKEA trademark which is licensed to IKEA stores around the world. For the use of this trademark every store pays a 3 percent (tax deductible) royalty on their turnover to Inter Ikea Holding B.V., an indirectly, (through Inter Ikea S.A in Luxembourg), wholly owned Dutch company. By means of what appears to be a back-to-back royalty agreement between Inter Ikea Holding and Interogo – but there could be additional agreements and companies interposed in this stratagem – 70 percent of the royalties are subsequently passed on to Interogo.
Mr Kamprad, who is wellknown for his international tax planning strategies, has issued a spirited defence of his business structure, which he said was designed to preserve IKEA's long-term independence and financial strength. Referring to IKEA's use of financial havens such as Liechtenstein, the 85 year old Swede argued that ”tax efficiency” is a natural part of the company's low-cost culture. ”We have always viewed taxes as a cost, equal to any other cost of doing business”, he said in a statement, while insisting ”that IKEA paid taxes in every country in which it operates and complied fully with all laws and regulations”. (According to one report in 2005, out of earnings of several hundred million dollars, IKEA paid a total of 3.5% in tax.) 3)
In a recent statement to Dagens Industri, Mr Hans Gydell, the CEO of Inter Ikea Holding, has said that the ownership of the IKEA trademark has been placed for all eternity in the tax paradise Liechtenstein, ”and even if Mr Kamprad would so wish it would be impossible to break this up and transfer ownership elsewhere. It was precisely for the purpose of protecting the IKEA concept and trademark for the future that this very special and stable ownership arrangement was chosen and I have never heard him regret this decision.” According to a recent article in Smålandsposten (25 February 2012) which is based on an interview with Mr Kamprad, who is usually quite reluctant to give interviews, explains that there is a quite flexible kind of foundation in Liechtenstein allowing its statutes to be changed with short notice. For example, Interogo had recently changed its rules regarding the nomination of its board members. Until the end of 2010 changes of board member ship was determined by a trust in Canada (Appo Trust in Ontario) 4) which is presently being dismantled. All that has been known about this trust was that it was controlled by the Kamprad family. Smålandsposten and SVT have unsuccessivly tried to get official information hereabout but it appears that Appo Trust is of a kind that does not require registration in Canada. Today the appointment of board membership in Interogo is carried out by a special administrative council (Stiftungsrat) consisting of Ingvar Kamprad, Mathias Kamprad, Alfred Wiederkehr member of the boards of the Ingka and Ikea Foundations, Per Ludvidsson chairman of the board of the Ikea Group, Hans Gydell, board member of the Ikea Group, Johannes Stenberg personal assistent to Ingvar Kamprad, and Urs Wickihalder, Partner Bratchi, Wiedermeir & Buob (Zurich) and member of the Council of the Association of Swiss Grantmaking Foundations. Upon resignation from the board Ingvar Kamprad shall appoint his successor. This structure will remain also upon Invar Kamprad leaving the organisation. The information is somewhat nebulous as the statutes also provide that the Kamprad family is entitled to three members of the council and that four shall be non Kamprad family members. Upon the resignation of Ingvar Kamprad every council member including those of the Kamprad family shall appoint his successor but the Kamprad family can veto such decisions. The board of Interogo which is supervised by the administrative council consists of Herbert Oberhuber and Johannes Burger, partners of Marxer & Partner lawfirm in Liechtenstein. They appoint the board members of Inter Ikea Holding annually. The chairman of the board of this company is the wellknown Swedish Tax Law Professor Göran Grosskopf. In addition the company also has a Supervisory Board chaired by Mr Kamprad. Some of the statutes of Interogo remain secret. Paragraph 12 is quite clear on this point: ”These statutes including specific changes thereof and all other factual and legal circumstances affecting the Foundation may not be disclosed to outsiders, in particular not to foreign administrative bodies.”
Together with the legal ownership of the IKEA trademark and the hundred percent share holding in Inter Ikea Holding B.V. as reported above, it appears that Mr Kamprad and his family have total control of the financial affairs of the Interogo Group 5)
For tax purposes, the benefits of this arrangement is that the Netherlands has tax treaties with (probably) most of the countries where the IKEA stores are situated, treaties which reduce royalty taxes in most cases to nil percent in the source state instead of the quite considerable taxes which usually are imposed hereon under domestic rules of these countries. Also, which indicates that the choice of Netherlands for the establishment of Inter Ikea Holding is not haphazard, this country under its domestic tax regime does not impose any source tax on roylties paid to either Liechtenstein or any other countries. Thus, the money, apart from an arm's lenght profit margin being taxed in the Netherlands, winds up completely tax free in the hands of the Interogo foundation. And there is of course no tax in Liechtenstein.
If on the other hand the royalties had been paid directly from the IKEA stores to Liechtenstein there would allways be full domestic source taxes on the royalties because there is no country that has a tax treaty with Liechtenstein. (In Sweden source taxes on outgoing royalties are imposed in this case at the corporate tax rate of 26.3%.) To use the usual tax lingo Interogo has thus ”shopped” the Netherlands' treaties concluded with the IKEA store countries. Or, in other words, Interogo has used the Netherlands and Inter Ikea Holding as a ”shopping bag” for tax purposes for collecting its world wide royalties.
However, which has already been mentioned above, there is an important condition in the royalty clause of most tax treaties prescribing that the source state is obliged to waive its source tax only if the recipient in the residence state (the Netherlands) is the beneficial owner of the (royalty) income. In French ”bénéficiaire effectif”, in German ”Nutzungsberechtiger”. In Sweden´s tax treaties the obligation to reduce the source tax requires that the recipient ”har rätt till royaltyn”. If therefore, when interpreting this term one would conclude that the Interogo Foundation in Liechtenstein and not Inter Ikea Holding in the Netherlands should be considered the beneficial owner of the royalties the benefits under the article are to be denied and the source state can go ahead and collect from Inter Ikea Holding (not Interogo as suggested in the title of this article) its regular domestic source taxes on royalties.
At the introduction of the concept of beneficial owner in the 1977 Commentaries to the Model Convention the only clarification of this term that was given was that intermediaries such as an agent or nominee did not qualify as beneficial owners and were thus excluded from treaty benefits on receipts of royalties, (dividends and interest).
Ten years later in the Conduit Company report it was further emphasized that beneficial ownership should also be read in the context of its purpose, namely in the effort of the OECD to deal with tax avoidance. The Committee on Fiscal Affairs had expressed its concern about the improper use of tax conventions by persons acting through a legal entity with the main or sole purpose of obtaining treaty benefits which would not be available directly to such a person. In the words of the Report, it ”deals with the most important situation of this kind, where a company situated in a treaty country is acting as a conduit for channeling income economically accruing to a person in another State who is thereby able to take advantage 'improperly' of the benefits provided by a tax treaty. This situation is often referred to as 'treaty shopping'. The 'conduit company' which is characteristic of such schemes is usually a corporation but may also be a partnership, trust or similar entity.”
The key word in this statement is that the income channeled through the conduit company economically accrues to a person in another State rather than to the conduit company. Usually, according to the Report, (but which, as explained above, is not the case in the Interogo/Inter Ikea Holding scheme), the assets and rights that give rise to the (dividends, interest, or) royalties have been transferred to the conduit company enabling it to obtain the treaty benefits.
In the new 2011 OECD discussion draft emphasis is further placed on the ability of the recipient to have ”the full right to use and enjoy the income received unconstrained by any contractual or legal obligation to pass the the payment received to another person.” Moreover, and quite importantly, under section 4.4. of the draft, the OECD points out that the fact that the recipient of royalties is considered to be the beneficial owner of the royalties does not preclude the possibility to deny the benefits of the treaty in cases of abuse of the provisions described in the Commentaries to paragraph 1 of the Model Treaty. These include specific treaty anti-abuse provisions, generel anti-abuse rules and substance-over-form or economic substance approaches.
As can be gleaned from the above analysis about the meaning of beneficial ownership the determination hereof is quite a complicated and multifaceted affair and, which is important to mention, can be established only upon a thorough investigation of the facts and circumstances of each and every case. It is therefore not possible to give a final answer hereto with regard to the Interogo/Inter Ikea Holding arrangement. It is therefore justified that the statement made in the title of this paper is followed by a questionmark.
The head of the legal department of The Swedish Tax Administration Mr Tomas Algotsson has declared (Dagens Industri 27 January 2011) that he cannot say if a tax inquiry will be initiated against IKEA. He points out that he can only handle the Swedish legislation in this regard but not the tax consequences of the foreign operations of the company. Regarding the 3 percent royalty payments he finds that this must be determined by the rules of the treatment of intercompany payments. This arm's length problem is, however, a completely different issue specifically dealt with in paragraph 4 of article 12 in the Sweden-The Netherlands tax treaty. Mr Algotsson's statement thus indicates that no attention seems to have been paid by the Tax Administration to the beneficial ownership question laid down in paragraph 1 of article 12. Probably because of the secrecy that has surrounded Interogo and that its business structure has thus not been understood.
As implied above a determination of the beneficial ownership concept is a very difficult one and, as far as is known, it has never been tested by any tax court in Sweden. There are several reasons, however, why a probe into these matters would be interesting in the Interogo/Inter Ikea Holding setup. Firstly, and most importantly, the information that has surfaced about Interogo and the royalty payments in the last couple of months, albeit somewhat conflicting, is of such a scope and nature that a test of the beneficial ownership concept in this case is indeed warranted and could also in the process shed light on this elusive tax treaty problem in general. Secondly, an investigation of this kind could prove to be of enormous fiscal interest not only to Sweden but to all countries that have IKEA stores. Mr Kamprad has confirmed that Interogo has amassed a fortune of about 12 billion US dollars, (corresponding to about 100 billion (miljarder) Swedish crowns) in Liechtenstein. IKEA's homepage reports that there are 334 stores – and counting – in 40 different countries. The number of stores in Sweden is about 17. According to Wikipedia the combined turnover in 2007 of IKEA was 212 billion SEK. 3 percent thereof amounts to 6.36 billion SEK. The loss of tax revenue by the Swedish treasury alone from the royalty scheme is estimated at 100 million SEK annually (Dagens Industi 26 January 2011). Thirdly, it should be mentioned that Sweden has recently negotiated an agreement with Liechtenstein for exchange of information for tax purposes and that therefore it should now be possible for the Swedish tax authorities to obtain full information about Interogo.
The development of an investigation of this kind would no doubt be closely followed by the tax authorities in the 39 other countries that have tax treaties with The Netherlands with a beneficial ownership clause.
Stockholm 5 March 2012
peter@sundgren.net
Footnotes:
1.A Swedish translation of the statutes of Interogo are available at http://svt.se/content/1/c8/02/30/43/75/Stadgar_Interogo_Svenska.pdf. Noteworthy is the fact that there are no references therein to Mr Kamprad or IKEA whatsoever.
2. Bosse Vikingsson and Kenneth Gehrman, reporters at Smålandsposten, have been nominated to the journalistic award The Golden Spade for their unearthing of the Interogo scheme.
3The “Berne Declaration”, a non-profit non governmental Swiss organization that promotes corporate responsibility, has formally criticized IKEA for its tax avoidance strategies. In 2007, the Berne Declaration nominated IKEA for one of its Public Eye "awards", which highlight corporate irresponsibility and are announced during theWorld Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
4. See paragraph 7 of the statutes of Interogo.
5. It should, however, be mentioned that this sharply contrasts with the information provided on IKEAs homepage which declares that the world wide IKEA concept is owned by Ikea Systems B.V. in The Netherlands and that the IKEA group and all franchisees make payments to the said company for the right to use the IKEA System and its continuing development and improvement. Also pointed out, and quite surprisingly, is that the relationship between Inter Ikea Systems B.V. and its franchisees is based on a business agreement between independent parties, (which for tax purposes would suggest that the royalty payments are not subject to arm's length tax considerations).
tisdag 21 februari 2012
How not to write an article on international taxation in Sweden
WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden no 1/2012 (February 2012)
by Peter Sundgren
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is not an article on international taxation in Sweden. As indicated in the title it's an article on how not to write an article on international taxation in Sweden. For publication that is in Skattenytt and/or Svensk Skattetidning, two leading and serious tax publications in Sweden.
Ever since the early 1980s I have written a very large number of reports and articles on international (income) tax matters. During my career at the Institute of Foreign Law in the 1980s and 90s all articles I submitted for publication to these journals were accepted but since then my publication record is very poor. Thus over the last decade practically everything I have written has been denied publication.
The scope, variations and indeed also the procedures for rejecting my papers have been so numerous and of such a character that, in my opinion, these rejections have not been based on impartial or objective reasons.
An example hereof was the very extensive, not to say incensed, debate that took place a couple of years ago regarding on the compliance of our domestic CFC rules with European Union obligations on the free movement of investments. Despite having provided very comprehensive arguments in its tax bill, something which incidentally is quite unique, describing and defending the Swedish legislation on this point the Swedish government were severely criticized herefor by a number of highly respected authors to articles in Skattenytt (e.g. Gunnar Rabe, Skattenytt 1-2/2004, professor Nils Mattsson Skattenytt no 4/2004). Moreover, at an open seminar arranged by the Swedish IFA Branch regarding Mr Mattssons draft article, Professor Emeritus Leif Mutén, Sweden's certainly most influential post-war authority on tax matters, even went so far as spurning the government's reasoning as representing ”pure pettifoggery” (brännvinsadvokatyr)! Subsequently, in my article on CFC rules versus EU law, which indeed represented the only support of the government's standpoint, Svensk Skattetidning demanded that my reference to Mr Mutén's remark at the IFA branch meeting be deleted. I underlined that Mr Mutén's statement had been made in public and as I disagreed with his opinion (and disapproved of his rhetoric) my reference hereto was important and appropriate. The article was then denied publication. (It should also be mentioned that Mr Mutén at the time was a member of the editorial board of Svensk Skattetidning).
In another article the editors of Svensk Skattetidning again demanded a deletion of a reference I had made to a public statement by an individual. This was on an issue that had created a contentious tax debate in Sweden namely the introduction of special tax priviledges for foreign experts and key personnel employed for work in Sweden. The individual in question was none other than Mr Lars Ramqvist, the then C.E.O of the Ericsson Corporation and President of the Federation of Swedish Industries and thus one of Sweden's most powerful and influential business leaders and creator of public opinion, who in various medias had vigorously pressed for legislation in this field (even foreboding that he would otherwise move the head office of Ericsson to London.) My main objection to his standpoint was that he had failed to consider the very generous tax breaks resulting from the widespread exploitation of so called tax rollover schemes for foreigners working in Sweden and that therefore he was exaggerating the problem. The editors, Ms Cecilia Gunne, Partner, Burenstam & Partners and Mr Anders Köhlmark, Partner, KPMG Stockholm, were uncomfortable with my mentioning of Mr Ramqvist's name and insisted that it be replaced by the more nebulous term ”the directors”. A further reason for my subsequent withdrawal of my article from publication was that the editors also insisted on issuing a separate and differring opinion on a point of law which I had debated in my article. I should of course point out that I certainly have no objections to differring views of my opinions beeing raised but, if so, they should be submitted as the personal views of the author(s) and not, as was the case, as editors of and under the aegis of Svensk Skattetidning and its scientific board.
Another reference I made to an individual came into focus again in an article I wrote in 2007. It concerned a matter that had made prolonged and intense headline news in all the medias in Sweden shortly after the the new center/moderate government alliance took office after the general election in 2006. It was then revealed by the press that the new minister of (foreign) trade Maria Borelius had been involved in concealed payouts to private nannies and, which finally forced Ms Borelius out of office after only a week on the job, for having exploited the use of holding companies in Jersey alledgedly for tax purposes. Not surprisingly, the tax authorities subsequently subjected Ms Borelius' tax returns to a thorough investigation and finally presented a bill for back taxes of about 800 000 SEK (mainly referring to non-declared income from the renting out of her private home in Sweden after she had moved to the UK.) I carefully analysed the tax authority's decision (which was not appealed by Ms Borelius), especially the international tax aspects of her foreign holding companies (of which there was no reason to have any specific tax complaints). Upon submitting my report for publication in Svensk Skattetidning I received a curt note from Ms Gunne informing me that no ”serious” tax publication would ever publish an article referring to the taxation of an identified private individual and upbraided me for violating Ms Borelius' integrity. I responded that Ms Borelius under the circumstances was nothing of a private individual but, on the contrary, a notable public figure, whose tax case had already been widely reported in the medias and who's identity anyway would be impossible to conceal in my article. Noteworthy too and somewhat troubling in my opinion was that Ms Gunne had acted as legal counsel to Ms Borelius in her tax case and in that capacity had let herself be interviewed by the press. (My article about Ms Borelius was subsequently published in the Law Review of The Institute of Foreign Law at the Jönköping International Business School and in this WebJournal - also serious tax publications!)
In 2009 I wrote an article for Svensk Skattetidning that displeased its new editors Jan Bjuvberg, Assistant professor of Fiscal Law at Uppsala University and Jari Burmeister, Partner Skeppsbron Skatt AB, Stockholm. My article addressed the very disputatious subject of migrating share gains which under our domestic 10 year rule are 'quarantined' for tax purposes in Sweden for a period of ten years upon emigration of the shareholder. I have written extensively on this tax matter never concealing my opinion that Sweden, like several other EU member states, should impose an exit tax on these gains in order to put a lid on the enormous Swedish tax base erosion that has taken place in these cases over many years. At first Messrs Bjuvberg and Burmeister rejected my article outright but upon further insistence on my part agreed to publish it. But not without what finally became a complete overhaul of what I had written. Thus setting to work, Mr Burmeister presented what can be described as an almost new version of my article completely altering its main thrust and totally taking the sting out the objections and arguments I had raised against the suggestion presented in a report from a government commission (SOU 2009:33) not to take action against the tax planning measures that had been engineered to circumvent the ten year rule. And again the issue of the identity of the author of the report came up. Mr Bjuvberg thus demanded that the name of the chairman of the Commission and author of the report, Mr Leif Gäwerth, a high ranking tax judge formally appointed by the Swedish government, should be kept secret and that reference should be made only to ”the report”. In order to allow publication I grudgingly accepted Mr Bjuvberg's demand. And then, ten days later, he unblushingly informed me that publication of my article, by a unanimous decision of the scientific board of Svensk Skattetidning, had nevertheless been denied. And no explanation for the refusal was given.It should be noted that the unanimous decision also included the vote of Mr Bjuvberg!
In my view the quite obsessive attitude held by Svensk Skattetidning regarding references to publicly declared statements by other individuals and open sources is quite puzzling. Personally I would be quite disturbed if reference were made to my publications and opinions without revealing their origin.
My efforts to have my articles published in Skattenytt have been fraught with equal dissension. In the mid 1990s, after I had had quite a long (and stimulating) discussion with Professor Mathias Dahlberg presently at the University of Uppsala, generating several articles in Skattenytt regarding the question whether the domestic Swedish law, giving effect to the tax treaty with Malaysia, by declaring that Labuan Island companies were not eligible for treaty benefits, had indeed overridden the treaty. I insisted that it had. Mr Dahlberg and supported by Mr Mutén, both at the time, representing the Fiscal Law Faculty of the Stockholm Business School were equally convinced that no override had taken place. They maintained that the Swedish law merely represented a unilateral interpretation of the bilateral treaty. Several years later the discussion was renewed when Maria Nelson and Eva Fransberg, both doctoral students and collegues of Mr Dahlberg and Mr Mutén at the said business school, also rejected my views on the Labuan override matter. So now I had the whole fiscal law faculty of the same business school lined up against me! I wrote a response hereto to be published in Skattenytt. Considering that Mr Dahlberg at this point had become editor of this periodical I imagined that publication of my article was a forgone conclusion. But, to my great exasperation publication was denied by Mr Dahlberg.
In 2008 the international tax debate in Sweden went into overdrive when the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) declared that our domestic CFC-regulation should take precedence over our tax treaties, concluding that the treaty in question need not even be consulted or analysed! The uproar from the whole Swedish international tax community over this treaty override measure was of a dimension that has never been experienced in the past giving rise to something like 15 angry articles. One of the leading critics was Mr Dahlberg himself. But in my view he had seriously misunderstood the ruling maintaining repetetively that the Court had not interpreted the treaty correctly and had thus detracted from its former principles reflected in several cases to respect the international law principles on treaty interpretations embodied in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. In a fifteen page rebuttal of Mr Dahlberg's opinion I declared that the SAC ruling had nothing to do whatsoever with treaty interpretation. Treaty interpretation, I insisted, is a process where an investigation is undertaken to reach a conclusion about the meaning of the treaty text as such. But as mentioned, the Court had reached its decision by completely ignoring the treaty. It had not applied the treaty. And if one has not applied nor analysed the treaty how can one then have interpreted it! I sent my manuscript by e-mail to Mr Dahlberg who obviously was sitting at his computer at that point. Because it took him only 18 minutes to deny publication, declaring that my article did not add anything of relevance to the discussion.
In late 2009 I submitted what I considered an important paper to Skattenytt on tax treaty interpretation reporting dissenting views with an earlier article by the then Supreme Administrative Court Justice Stefan Ersson. The main thrust of my article was my disappointment with Mr Ersson's suggestions that treaties should be interpreted in line with principles of interpreting domestic Swedish tax laws. My article was framed according to a carefully structured list of six basic reservations reminding my readers in particular of the landmark decision in Rå 1987 ref. 162 which – reflecting the brilliance and eloquence of Anders Swartling, a towering figure on the Supreme Administrative Court in the post war era - remains the beacon for tax treaty interpretation. My article was quite favourably received by Mr Dahlberg but his decision to publish it was overruled by his editorial board who considered it too ”person-oriented” (personorienterad).
As aforementioned both Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt enjoy a high reputation for the quality and reliability of their articles. This no doubt is maintained by the high-profiled members of their scientific committees. In order to safeguard this reputation Skattenytt for some of its articles has recently also introduced a special peer review procedure.
Some time ago, however, I had reason to doubt the correctness of an article in Skattenytt. I had noticed that the author of an essay relating to our ten year rule and its interaction with the pertinent tax treaty had, in my view, erroneously reached the conclusion that the share gain in question should be taxed in the other contracting state and not in Sweden. And if so the error was quite serious because it affected an important general aspect of the relationship between domestic law and tax treaties. I contacted Mr Dahlberg about my misgivings to inquire if he shared my opinion. In his reply Mr Dahlberg declined to address the legal points I had raised saying only that he took no responsibility for the legal content of the materials published in his journal and that he had found the article fully acceptable considering that it had addressed an interesting and important tax issue raised by a young tax scholar. He had forwarded the article to the author who had declared that he had no further comments to what he had written. Later on, however, he wrote an explanation to his article which in the end nevertheless failed to point out that the gain should be taxed in Sweden.
In 2008 I wrote two articles both in English. One of them titled ”Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC) Taxation in Sweden and the new ”business purpose” test.” The other article was about the draft Swedish national report to be submitted to the 2008 IFA congress on the subject ”New Tendencies in Tax Treatment of Crossborder Interest of Corporations” by Professor Peter Melz of the Stockholm University and Lars Jonsson, Partner, Linklaters, Stockholm. My main complaint about their report was that it had failed to point out the (quite phenomenal) combined effect for foreign investors in Sweden of a) full deduction of interest expense, b) total absence of thin capitalisation restrictions c) no interest withholding taxes and d) the existence of Sweden's wide treaty network, all of which makes Sweden into a very favourable stepping-stone and treaty shopping jurisdiction for tax purposes also for investors in countries that do not have a treaty with Sweden. The reason for rejection this time of these two articles was that they were considered of little interest and that they were written in English. I thought this latter reason for rejecting my article on the crossborder interest issue was quite bizarre considering that the national report that I was commenting was also in English! I then suggested to the Swedish IFA branch that they put my article on their website. But after a meeting of the board of the branch this request was also denied. (Incidentally, a number of the board members of the Swedish IFA branch are also on the editorial committees of Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt.) I sent my paper to the discussion leader at the congress, Professor Brian Arnold (Canada) and it was reported that the Swedish tax situation did indeed attract quite some interest at the congress proceedings. The first mentioned CFC/business purpose article was later granted publication in the US in Tax Notes International (April 14, 2008).
As gleaned from the above it is difficult to determine on what grounds publication is given by the two magazines. One article I wrote for Svensk Skattetidning (in response to Ms Ann Sophie Sallander's paper on treaty override, see below) was rejected by Mr Bjuvberg simply because he didn't like the rhetoric in it. Another he dismissed due to a dispute that I had previously had with the editor of Skattenytt. Since recently publication decisions regarding my papers are made jointly by the two tax journals.
I have asked both Mr Bjuvberg and Mr Roger Persson Österman, the present editor of Skattenytt and Senior Tax Manager at Ernst & Young, Stockholm, what are the actual criterias for publication of articles in their magazines. Mr Bjuvberg has responded that as far as Svensk Skattetidning is concerned such rules are ”unofficial” and consequently not disclosed and Mr Persson Österman says that Skattenytt does not have any guidelines for determining publication decisions. My request for an interview with the two gentlemen for this article has been turned down on the grounds that the affairs of their publications are not of a public concern (publik angelägenhet). Mr Persson Österman has also announced that in the future he will leave no reasons at all when denying publication on submitted materials, citing that, because Skattenytt is a private company, he is not obliged to do so.
As I have mentioned above the number of articles I have written is very large. Also, the scope of topics covered is very wide. Many of them have addressed tax treaty issues such as treaty interpretation, residence matters, treaty override (and general problems regarding the relationship between domestic law and tax treaties), partnership taxation, beneficial ownership restrictions, competent authority procedures, exchange of information etc. My articles have also covered a number of domestic international tax matters such as our ten year rule, our tax rollover and foreign expert taxation, our CFC-rules, our new participation exemption regulations, ”interest spinners” etc. and I have authored several articles regarding the taxation of foreign trusts.
On the whole - maybe a 7 on a 1-10 scale- I would suggest that my papers/articles have favoured opinions and come to conclusions that would be considered ”anti tax payer friendly”. Thus as discussed above I supported the Swedish government's view on the compatibility of our CFC regime with EU law. I have strongly advocated an introduction of exit tax legislation on migrating share gains under the ten year rule and criticized the government's quiescence in this regard. (But on the other hand I think the scope of the tax liability of the gains should be limited to closely held companies only.) In order to prevent sham emigrations abroad I have also advised that claw-back rules should be adopted for such gains if the seller returns to Sweden within five years upon emigration. I strongly suggest that tax roll over mechanisms should be abolished for foreigners working in Sweden. Withholding tax on interest payments should be imposed together possibly with thin capitalisation rules (something which incidentally is presently being explored by a government tax commission). Royalties derived in Sweden by non-residents should however be tax exempt with the exception of payments to tax havens. Double non-taxation opportunities must be counteracted in our treaties calling for instance for more stringent reporting requierments on non-remitted income. Dual resident individuals should not be allowed a deduction for full interest expense under domestic tax law and simultaneously enjoy exemption from tax for interest income under a treaty. Bilateral agreements allowing automatic information exchange should be negotiated. Strong measures should be taken to discourage tax haven exploitation. Taxation of foreign trusts and regulations on disclosure of such income needs a lot of consideration.
All of this, if carried out, would of course be bad news for tax payers. And sometimes I have speculated whether this has been a reason for my materials having been so often rejected. Are Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt – I have wispered to myself - in any way prejudiced or biased with regard to tax matters and tax policies? In the cases reported above regarding my articles on exit taxes on migrating share gains and tax rollovers, both of which give rise to enormous tax base erosion by taxpayers and employ armies of tax consultants, (some of which have asked me not to speak so "loudly" on these matters), I would suggest that such bias is quite noticeable.
Therefore, for a tax publication (of whatever eminence) claiming to be impartial and objective, it is imperative to strike a balance of allowing all participants in a tax debate or commentators otherwise pursuing their opinions on tax matters to have their voices heard. Therefore, with all respect, in order not to invite fault-finding in this regard, the editors of such publications - and irrespective of their professional qualifications - should be chosen from other ranks than taxpayer representatives and instead be selected within academic circles and tax courts. This indeed has always been the case in the past. Thus, the list of editors since the 1980s has been: Skattenytt: Hans Bylin, Gothenburg Tax Appeals Court judge, Sigvard Bergöf, Supreme Administrative Court Justice, Peter Melz, professor Stockholm University, Robert Påhlsson, professor Gothenburg University. Svensk Skattetidning: Rolf Engblom, Supreme Administrative Court Justice and Arne Baekkevold, Supreme Administrative Court Justice. Lately, however the editors of Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt do not fit the ”editorial standards” just mentioned. Almost all of them have been tax consultants. And, which would no doubt stir up quite some emotions, these publications have never had an editor from the fiscal authorities. Moreover, considering its influence on editorial matters, the ”taxpayer-fisc equilibrum” should also be reflected in the composition of the scientific committees or editorial boards of Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt. This today is not the case. Out of ten members on the editorial board of Skattenytt (Anita Saldén-Enerus, Björne Sjökvist, Ingrid Melbi, Jan Kleerup, Karin Attorps, Lars Samuelsson, Per Classon, Richard Hellenius Ulf Tivéus and Lena Lindström-Ihre) there is only one (Björne Sjökvist) that represents the tax administration. The corresponding council at Svensk Skattetidning has nine members (Anders Köhlmark, Anne Rutberg, Cécile Brokelind, Cecilia Gunne, Ingela Willfors, Krister Andersson, Kristina Ståhl, Thomas Andersson and Håkan Söderberg) of which none represents the tax authorities.
However, since the advent of the dot.com era and other social medias the effects of my limited access to Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt has been blunted. Because now you have at your service this WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden, the one you are just reading.
For anyone who is not on the mailing list (comprising about 1700 international tax experts worldwide) who will be notified whenever new stuff is published, or for anyone that has forgotten my blog address petersundgren.blogspot.com you can just google ”webjournal taxation” and the webjournal will come up in first, second and third place. Or just google ”international taxation” and you will find it eighth place. (January 10). I have suggested to Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt, but without result, that they too create their own websites to be used for various materials (and with a link to this website journal).
With some disappointment I have, however, noted that the materials on this webjournal have been neglected in Swedish academic circles. Thus, recently when Ms Catja Cejie at Uppsala university published her doctoral dissertation on ”Emigration taxes ” (on capital gains) there was not a single reference to the quite comprehensive materials I have written hereon in this webjournal. I wrote a paper for Skattenytt on Ms Cejies book but it was denied publication by Mr Persson Österman because Professor Mats Tjernberg, who had served as opposer to the dissertation would be writing an article hereon and that was expected to be sufficient by Mr Persson Österman. Today, fourteen months later, no such article has appeared.
In early 2010, when Ann-Sohie Sallander, a scholar at the Jönköping International Business School, wrote an article on treaty override she had also disregarded all my publications on this subject – there were three of them - in my webjournal. When asked hereabout she declared that she had ignored what I had written because beeing published on the internet it did not have the same scientific quality as materials published by ordinary tax publications. My subsequent article on treaty override and comments to Ms Sallander's article were – yes, you guessed correctly – denied publication by Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt.
In early 2011 Mr Dahlberg wrote an additional article for Skattenytt on treaty override. When citing – exhaustively it appeared - all materials that had been published on this matter he too failed to mention my articles published hereon in WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden.
Both Ms Cejie, Ms Sallander and Mr Dahlberg are subscribers to the webjournal in question. I have requested permission to have Ms Sallander's and Mr Dahlberg's articles published in my WebJournal. Both they and Messrs Bjuvberg et Persson Österman, all four of them, have, however, refused giving such permission. (Mr Bjuvberg has even declared that he will never give permission to publish anything of Svensk Skattetidning's material in the WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden.)
I have sometimes felt like a Don Quixote tilting at windmills in my endeavours to have my ideas and opinions on international tax matters published in Sweden. Perhaps – and mimicking professor Gustaf Lindencrona's frustration over the Supreme Administrative Court Justices' understanding of treaty override in the OMX case – I will just have to set my hopes to the next generation of editors at Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt.
Stockholm 21 February 2012.
peter@sundgren.net
P.S. This paper has not been submitted to Svensk Skattetidning or Skattenytt for publication. It has, however, been sent to Mr Bjuvberg and Mr Persson Österman for comments but there have been none.
by Peter Sundgren
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is not an article on international taxation in Sweden. As indicated in the title it's an article on how not to write an article on international taxation in Sweden. For publication that is in Skattenytt and/or Svensk Skattetidning, two leading and serious tax publications in Sweden.
Ever since the early 1980s I have written a very large number of reports and articles on international (income) tax matters. During my career at the Institute of Foreign Law in the 1980s and 90s all articles I submitted for publication to these journals were accepted but since then my publication record is very poor. Thus over the last decade practically everything I have written has been denied publication.
The scope, variations and indeed also the procedures for rejecting my papers have been so numerous and of such a character that, in my opinion, these rejections have not been based on impartial or objective reasons.
An example hereof was the very extensive, not to say incensed, debate that took place a couple of years ago regarding on the compliance of our domestic CFC rules with European Union obligations on the free movement of investments. Despite having provided very comprehensive arguments in its tax bill, something which incidentally is quite unique, describing and defending the Swedish legislation on this point the Swedish government were severely criticized herefor by a number of highly respected authors to articles in Skattenytt (e.g. Gunnar Rabe, Skattenytt 1-2/2004, professor Nils Mattsson Skattenytt no 4/2004). Moreover, at an open seminar arranged by the Swedish IFA Branch regarding Mr Mattssons draft article, Professor Emeritus Leif Mutén, Sweden's certainly most influential post-war authority on tax matters, even went so far as spurning the government's reasoning as representing ”pure pettifoggery” (brännvinsadvokatyr)! Subsequently, in my article on CFC rules versus EU law, which indeed represented the only support of the government's standpoint, Svensk Skattetidning demanded that my reference to Mr Mutén's remark at the IFA branch meeting be deleted. I underlined that Mr Mutén's statement had been made in public and as I disagreed with his opinion (and disapproved of his rhetoric) my reference hereto was important and appropriate. The article was then denied publication. (It should also be mentioned that Mr Mutén at the time was a member of the editorial board of Svensk Skattetidning).
In another article the editors of Svensk Skattetidning again demanded a deletion of a reference I had made to a public statement by an individual. This was on an issue that had created a contentious tax debate in Sweden namely the introduction of special tax priviledges for foreign experts and key personnel employed for work in Sweden. The individual in question was none other than Mr Lars Ramqvist, the then C.E.O of the Ericsson Corporation and President of the Federation of Swedish Industries and thus one of Sweden's most powerful and influential business leaders and creator of public opinion, who in various medias had vigorously pressed for legislation in this field (even foreboding that he would otherwise move the head office of Ericsson to London.) My main objection to his standpoint was that he had failed to consider the very generous tax breaks resulting from the widespread exploitation of so called tax rollover schemes for foreigners working in Sweden and that therefore he was exaggerating the problem. The editors, Ms Cecilia Gunne, Partner, Burenstam & Partners and Mr Anders Köhlmark, Partner, KPMG Stockholm, were uncomfortable with my mentioning of Mr Ramqvist's name and insisted that it be replaced by the more nebulous term ”the directors”. A further reason for my subsequent withdrawal of my article from publication was that the editors also insisted on issuing a separate and differring opinion on a point of law which I had debated in my article. I should of course point out that I certainly have no objections to differring views of my opinions beeing raised but, if so, they should be submitted as the personal views of the author(s) and not, as was the case, as editors of and under the aegis of Svensk Skattetidning and its scientific board.
Another reference I made to an individual came into focus again in an article I wrote in 2007. It concerned a matter that had made prolonged and intense headline news in all the medias in Sweden shortly after the the new center/moderate government alliance took office after the general election in 2006. It was then revealed by the press that the new minister of (foreign) trade Maria Borelius had been involved in concealed payouts to private nannies and, which finally forced Ms Borelius out of office after only a week on the job, for having exploited the use of holding companies in Jersey alledgedly for tax purposes. Not surprisingly, the tax authorities subsequently subjected Ms Borelius' tax returns to a thorough investigation and finally presented a bill for back taxes of about 800 000 SEK (mainly referring to non-declared income from the renting out of her private home in Sweden after she had moved to the UK.) I carefully analysed the tax authority's decision (which was not appealed by Ms Borelius), especially the international tax aspects of her foreign holding companies (of which there was no reason to have any specific tax complaints). Upon submitting my report for publication in Svensk Skattetidning I received a curt note from Ms Gunne informing me that no ”serious” tax publication would ever publish an article referring to the taxation of an identified private individual and upbraided me for violating Ms Borelius' integrity. I responded that Ms Borelius under the circumstances was nothing of a private individual but, on the contrary, a notable public figure, whose tax case had already been widely reported in the medias and who's identity anyway would be impossible to conceal in my article. Noteworthy too and somewhat troubling in my opinion was that Ms Gunne had acted as legal counsel to Ms Borelius in her tax case and in that capacity had let herself be interviewed by the press. (My article about Ms Borelius was subsequently published in the Law Review of The Institute of Foreign Law at the Jönköping International Business School and in this WebJournal - also serious tax publications!)
In 2009 I wrote an article for Svensk Skattetidning that displeased its new editors Jan Bjuvberg, Assistant professor of Fiscal Law at Uppsala University and Jari Burmeister, Partner Skeppsbron Skatt AB, Stockholm. My article addressed the very disputatious subject of migrating share gains which under our domestic 10 year rule are 'quarantined' for tax purposes in Sweden for a period of ten years upon emigration of the shareholder. I have written extensively on this tax matter never concealing my opinion that Sweden, like several other EU member states, should impose an exit tax on these gains in order to put a lid on the enormous Swedish tax base erosion that has taken place in these cases over many years. At first Messrs Bjuvberg and Burmeister rejected my article outright but upon further insistence on my part agreed to publish it. But not without what finally became a complete overhaul of what I had written. Thus setting to work, Mr Burmeister presented what can be described as an almost new version of my article completely altering its main thrust and totally taking the sting out the objections and arguments I had raised against the suggestion presented in a report from a government commission (SOU 2009:33) not to take action against the tax planning measures that had been engineered to circumvent the ten year rule. And again the issue of the identity of the author of the report came up. Mr Bjuvberg thus demanded that the name of the chairman of the Commission and author of the report, Mr Leif Gäwerth, a high ranking tax judge formally appointed by the Swedish government, should be kept secret and that reference should be made only to ”the report”. In order to allow publication I grudgingly accepted Mr Bjuvberg's demand. And then, ten days later, he unblushingly informed me that publication of my article, by a unanimous decision of the scientific board of Svensk Skattetidning, had nevertheless been denied. And no explanation for the refusal was given.It should be noted that the unanimous decision also included the vote of Mr Bjuvberg!
In my view the quite obsessive attitude held by Svensk Skattetidning regarding references to publicly declared statements by other individuals and open sources is quite puzzling. Personally I would be quite disturbed if reference were made to my publications and opinions without revealing their origin.
My efforts to have my articles published in Skattenytt have been fraught with equal dissension. In the mid 1990s, after I had had quite a long (and stimulating) discussion with Professor Mathias Dahlberg presently at the University of Uppsala, generating several articles in Skattenytt regarding the question whether the domestic Swedish law, giving effect to the tax treaty with Malaysia, by declaring that Labuan Island companies were not eligible for treaty benefits, had indeed overridden the treaty. I insisted that it had. Mr Dahlberg and supported by Mr Mutén, both at the time, representing the Fiscal Law Faculty of the Stockholm Business School were equally convinced that no override had taken place. They maintained that the Swedish law merely represented a unilateral interpretation of the bilateral treaty. Several years later the discussion was renewed when Maria Nelson and Eva Fransberg, both doctoral students and collegues of Mr Dahlberg and Mr Mutén at the said business school, also rejected my views on the Labuan override matter. So now I had the whole fiscal law faculty of the same business school lined up against me! I wrote a response hereto to be published in Skattenytt. Considering that Mr Dahlberg at this point had become editor of this periodical I imagined that publication of my article was a forgone conclusion. But, to my great exasperation publication was denied by Mr Dahlberg.
In 2008 the international tax debate in Sweden went into overdrive when the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) declared that our domestic CFC-regulation should take precedence over our tax treaties, concluding that the treaty in question need not even be consulted or analysed! The uproar from the whole Swedish international tax community over this treaty override measure was of a dimension that has never been experienced in the past giving rise to something like 15 angry articles. One of the leading critics was Mr Dahlberg himself. But in my view he had seriously misunderstood the ruling maintaining repetetively that the Court had not interpreted the treaty correctly and had thus detracted from its former principles reflected in several cases to respect the international law principles on treaty interpretations embodied in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. In a fifteen page rebuttal of Mr Dahlberg's opinion I declared that the SAC ruling had nothing to do whatsoever with treaty interpretation. Treaty interpretation, I insisted, is a process where an investigation is undertaken to reach a conclusion about the meaning of the treaty text as such. But as mentioned, the Court had reached its decision by completely ignoring the treaty. It had not applied the treaty. And if one has not applied nor analysed the treaty how can one then have interpreted it! I sent my manuscript by e-mail to Mr Dahlberg who obviously was sitting at his computer at that point. Because it took him only 18 minutes to deny publication, declaring that my article did not add anything of relevance to the discussion.
In late 2009 I submitted what I considered an important paper to Skattenytt on tax treaty interpretation reporting dissenting views with an earlier article by the then Supreme Administrative Court Justice Stefan Ersson. The main thrust of my article was my disappointment with Mr Ersson's suggestions that treaties should be interpreted in line with principles of interpreting domestic Swedish tax laws. My article was framed according to a carefully structured list of six basic reservations reminding my readers in particular of the landmark decision in Rå 1987 ref. 162 which – reflecting the brilliance and eloquence of Anders Swartling, a towering figure on the Supreme Administrative Court in the post war era - remains the beacon for tax treaty interpretation. My article was quite favourably received by Mr Dahlberg but his decision to publish it was overruled by his editorial board who considered it too ”person-oriented” (personorienterad).
As aforementioned both Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt enjoy a high reputation for the quality and reliability of their articles. This no doubt is maintained by the high-profiled members of their scientific committees. In order to safeguard this reputation Skattenytt for some of its articles has recently also introduced a special peer review procedure.
Some time ago, however, I had reason to doubt the correctness of an article in Skattenytt. I had noticed that the author of an essay relating to our ten year rule and its interaction with the pertinent tax treaty had, in my view, erroneously reached the conclusion that the share gain in question should be taxed in the other contracting state and not in Sweden. And if so the error was quite serious because it affected an important general aspect of the relationship between domestic law and tax treaties. I contacted Mr Dahlberg about my misgivings to inquire if he shared my opinion. In his reply Mr Dahlberg declined to address the legal points I had raised saying only that he took no responsibility for the legal content of the materials published in his journal and that he had found the article fully acceptable considering that it had addressed an interesting and important tax issue raised by a young tax scholar. He had forwarded the article to the author who had declared that he had no further comments to what he had written. Later on, however, he wrote an explanation to his article which in the end nevertheless failed to point out that the gain should be taxed in Sweden.
In 2008 I wrote two articles both in English. One of them titled ”Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC) Taxation in Sweden and the new ”business purpose” test.” The other article was about the draft Swedish national report to be submitted to the 2008 IFA congress on the subject ”New Tendencies in Tax Treatment of Crossborder Interest of Corporations” by Professor Peter Melz of the Stockholm University and Lars Jonsson, Partner, Linklaters, Stockholm. My main complaint about their report was that it had failed to point out the (quite phenomenal) combined effect for foreign investors in Sweden of a) full deduction of interest expense, b) total absence of thin capitalisation restrictions c) no interest withholding taxes and d) the existence of Sweden's wide treaty network, all of which makes Sweden into a very favourable stepping-stone and treaty shopping jurisdiction for tax purposes also for investors in countries that do not have a treaty with Sweden. The reason for rejection this time of these two articles was that they were considered of little interest and that they were written in English. I thought this latter reason for rejecting my article on the crossborder interest issue was quite bizarre considering that the national report that I was commenting was also in English! I then suggested to the Swedish IFA branch that they put my article on their website. But after a meeting of the board of the branch this request was also denied. (Incidentally, a number of the board members of the Swedish IFA branch are also on the editorial committees of Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt.) I sent my paper to the discussion leader at the congress, Professor Brian Arnold (Canada) and it was reported that the Swedish tax situation did indeed attract quite some interest at the congress proceedings. The first mentioned CFC/business purpose article was later granted publication in the US in Tax Notes International (April 14, 2008).
As gleaned from the above it is difficult to determine on what grounds publication is given by the two magazines. One article I wrote for Svensk Skattetidning (in response to Ms Ann Sophie Sallander's paper on treaty override, see below) was rejected by Mr Bjuvberg simply because he didn't like the rhetoric in it. Another he dismissed due to a dispute that I had previously had with the editor of Skattenytt. Since recently publication decisions regarding my papers are made jointly by the two tax journals.
I have asked both Mr Bjuvberg and Mr Roger Persson Österman, the present editor of Skattenytt and Senior Tax Manager at Ernst & Young, Stockholm, what are the actual criterias for publication of articles in their magazines. Mr Bjuvberg has responded that as far as Svensk Skattetidning is concerned such rules are ”unofficial” and consequently not disclosed and Mr Persson Österman says that Skattenytt does not have any guidelines for determining publication decisions. My request for an interview with the two gentlemen for this article has been turned down on the grounds that the affairs of their publications are not of a public concern (publik angelägenhet). Mr Persson Österman has also announced that in the future he will leave no reasons at all when denying publication on submitted materials, citing that, because Skattenytt is a private company, he is not obliged to do so.
As I have mentioned above the number of articles I have written is very large. Also, the scope of topics covered is very wide. Many of them have addressed tax treaty issues such as treaty interpretation, residence matters, treaty override (and general problems regarding the relationship between domestic law and tax treaties), partnership taxation, beneficial ownership restrictions, competent authority procedures, exchange of information etc. My articles have also covered a number of domestic international tax matters such as our ten year rule, our tax rollover and foreign expert taxation, our CFC-rules, our new participation exemption regulations, ”interest spinners” etc. and I have authored several articles regarding the taxation of foreign trusts.
On the whole - maybe a 7 on a 1-10 scale- I would suggest that my papers/articles have favoured opinions and come to conclusions that would be considered ”anti tax payer friendly”. Thus as discussed above I supported the Swedish government's view on the compatibility of our CFC regime with EU law. I have strongly advocated an introduction of exit tax legislation on migrating share gains under the ten year rule and criticized the government's quiescence in this regard. (But on the other hand I think the scope of the tax liability of the gains should be limited to closely held companies only.) In order to prevent sham emigrations abroad I have also advised that claw-back rules should be adopted for such gains if the seller returns to Sweden within five years upon emigration. I strongly suggest that tax roll over mechanisms should be abolished for foreigners working in Sweden. Withholding tax on interest payments should be imposed together possibly with thin capitalisation rules (something which incidentally is presently being explored by a government tax commission). Royalties derived in Sweden by non-residents should however be tax exempt with the exception of payments to tax havens. Double non-taxation opportunities must be counteracted in our treaties calling for instance for more stringent reporting requierments on non-remitted income. Dual resident individuals should not be allowed a deduction for full interest expense under domestic tax law and simultaneously enjoy exemption from tax for interest income under a treaty. Bilateral agreements allowing automatic information exchange should be negotiated. Strong measures should be taken to discourage tax haven exploitation. Taxation of foreign trusts and regulations on disclosure of such income needs a lot of consideration.
All of this, if carried out, would of course be bad news for tax payers. And sometimes I have speculated whether this has been a reason for my materials having been so often rejected. Are Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt – I have wispered to myself - in any way prejudiced or biased with regard to tax matters and tax policies? In the cases reported above regarding my articles on exit taxes on migrating share gains and tax rollovers, both of which give rise to enormous tax base erosion by taxpayers and employ armies of tax consultants, (some of which have asked me not to speak so "loudly" on these matters), I would suggest that such bias is quite noticeable.
Therefore, for a tax publication (of whatever eminence) claiming to be impartial and objective, it is imperative to strike a balance of allowing all participants in a tax debate or commentators otherwise pursuing their opinions on tax matters to have their voices heard. Therefore, with all respect, in order not to invite fault-finding in this regard, the editors of such publications - and irrespective of their professional qualifications - should be chosen from other ranks than taxpayer representatives and instead be selected within academic circles and tax courts. This indeed has always been the case in the past. Thus, the list of editors since the 1980s has been: Skattenytt: Hans Bylin, Gothenburg Tax Appeals Court judge, Sigvard Bergöf, Supreme Administrative Court Justice, Peter Melz, professor Stockholm University, Robert Påhlsson, professor Gothenburg University. Svensk Skattetidning: Rolf Engblom, Supreme Administrative Court Justice and Arne Baekkevold, Supreme Administrative Court Justice. Lately, however the editors of Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt do not fit the ”editorial standards” just mentioned. Almost all of them have been tax consultants. And, which would no doubt stir up quite some emotions, these publications have never had an editor from the fiscal authorities. Moreover, considering its influence on editorial matters, the ”taxpayer-fisc equilibrum” should also be reflected in the composition of the scientific committees or editorial boards of Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt. This today is not the case. Out of ten members on the editorial board of Skattenytt (Anita Saldén-Enerus, Björne Sjökvist, Ingrid Melbi, Jan Kleerup, Karin Attorps, Lars Samuelsson, Per Classon, Richard Hellenius Ulf Tivéus and Lena Lindström-Ihre) there is only one (Björne Sjökvist) that represents the tax administration. The corresponding council at Svensk Skattetidning has nine members (Anders Köhlmark, Anne Rutberg, Cécile Brokelind, Cecilia Gunne, Ingela Willfors, Krister Andersson, Kristina Ståhl, Thomas Andersson and Håkan Söderberg) of which none represents the tax authorities.
However, since the advent of the dot.com era and other social medias the effects of my limited access to Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt has been blunted. Because now you have at your service this WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden, the one you are just reading.
For anyone who is not on the mailing list (comprising about 1700 international tax experts worldwide) who will be notified whenever new stuff is published, or for anyone that has forgotten my blog address petersundgren.blogspot.com you can just google ”webjournal taxation” and the webjournal will come up in first, second and third place. Or just google ”international taxation” and you will find it eighth place. (January 10). I have suggested to Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt, but without result, that they too create their own websites to be used for various materials (and with a link to this website journal).
With some disappointment I have, however, noted that the materials on this webjournal have been neglected in Swedish academic circles. Thus, recently when Ms Catja Cejie at Uppsala university published her doctoral dissertation on ”Emigration taxes ” (on capital gains) there was not a single reference to the quite comprehensive materials I have written hereon in this webjournal. I wrote a paper for Skattenytt on Ms Cejies book but it was denied publication by Mr Persson Österman because Professor Mats Tjernberg, who had served as opposer to the dissertation would be writing an article hereon and that was expected to be sufficient by Mr Persson Österman. Today, fourteen months later, no such article has appeared.
In early 2010, when Ann-Sohie Sallander, a scholar at the Jönköping International Business School, wrote an article on treaty override she had also disregarded all my publications on this subject – there were three of them - in my webjournal. When asked hereabout she declared that she had ignored what I had written because beeing published on the internet it did not have the same scientific quality as materials published by ordinary tax publications. My subsequent article on treaty override and comments to Ms Sallander's article were – yes, you guessed correctly – denied publication by Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt.
In early 2011 Mr Dahlberg wrote an additional article for Skattenytt on treaty override. When citing – exhaustively it appeared - all materials that had been published on this matter he too failed to mention my articles published hereon in WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden.
Both Ms Cejie, Ms Sallander and Mr Dahlberg are subscribers to the webjournal in question. I have requested permission to have Ms Sallander's and Mr Dahlberg's articles published in my WebJournal. Both they and Messrs Bjuvberg et Persson Österman, all four of them, have, however, refused giving such permission. (Mr Bjuvberg has even declared that he will never give permission to publish anything of Svensk Skattetidning's material in the WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden.)
I have sometimes felt like a Don Quixote tilting at windmills in my endeavours to have my ideas and opinions on international tax matters published in Sweden. Perhaps – and mimicking professor Gustaf Lindencrona's frustration over the Supreme Administrative Court Justices' understanding of treaty override in the OMX case – I will just have to set my hopes to the next generation of editors at Svensk Skattetidning and Skattenytt.
Stockholm 21 February 2012.
peter@sundgren.net
P.S. This paper has not been submitted to Svensk Skattetidning or Skattenytt for publication. It has, however, been sent to Mr Bjuvberg and Mr Persson Österman for comments but there have been none.
Letter to the board of the Swedish IFA Branch
WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden no 1/2012 (February 21 2012)
Stockholm January 17 2012
To the Board of the Swedish IFA branch
For quite some time I have been contemplating an idea where I believe IFA/Sweden with its expertise, integrity and experience could play an important role in the field of international taxation namely the function and structure of our tax treaties and the policies that should be adopted regarding these treaties.
As we are all aware, both the National Audit Office (Riksrevisionen) and the Federation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) have recently submitted quite critical reports to government and parliament for their long lasting neglect of our tax treaty network. This, it is suggested, has had negative effects for the competitiveness of our industry and international commerce. The National Audit Office has also complained that our information exchange has not been updated with important secrecy jurisdictions and that old treaties are still being abused for unwarranted tax avoidance purposes.
It can now be expected that the government will step up its treaty making activities but one should not be content herewith. Now should therefore be a good point in time also to take more interest in how our treaties are structured and to make proposals to this effect. International developments both in Sweden and abroad require that we take a closer look att our treaty policies. And this should be a concern not only for the government and the finance department but should become an issue for debate in wider circles. This also, as noted below, should also lead to considerations for changes of parts of our domestic international tax regime.
Today the negotiation of tax treaties takes place behind closed doors where the tax payer community is presented with the a final and signed treaty as a faite accomplie. Only the Tax Administration and the Tax Appeals Court in Stockholm are invited to express their views on technical matters of the initialled text. Only once, as far as I recall, was an initialled text regarding the treaty with Germany made public which also gave rise to widespread interest and requests for changes. Sometimes in the past the negotiators would inquire at the Federation of Swedish Industries and the Institute of Foreign Law about requests and ideas when a new treaty was being contemplated. The aforementioned report by the Federation of Swedish Enterprize indicates that this custom has been discontinued.
As mentioned IFA/Sweden would be a very suitable institution for taking the lead in a promotion of a new approach to the making of our tax treaties. I suggest that one put together a working party comprising a select group of IFA members representing tax payer, government ant tax administration interests to work out a report which could then be distributed to all members and discussed at a seminar.
A starting point for considerations of our treaty policy should be an examination of our own domestic, albeit unofficial, model tax treaty (which long ago I commented in IUR-INFO.) This in itself would no doubt give rise to plenty of ideas.
But I also have a number of ideas that could be brought up in a discussion of this kind. This discussion should be as broad as possible and as already mentioned cover also suggestions for changes of domestic tax law and various methods for the application of tax treaties:
1. First of all it could be questioned whether we should really have so many treaties as today and thus suggest that some of them be terminated. For instance, do we really, with all respect, need treaties with such countries as e.g. Mauritius, Zambia and Trinidad and Tobago? Instead of treaties one could consider having domestic rules for specific and less ”important” countries where Swedish investors – and they are probably quite few – could be given tax reliefs corresponding to those in our treaties. For instance full credit for the foreign tax or a credit for taxes above a certain level imposed in the other country. Investments in Sweden by companies in the pertinent country
could also be given the same treatment as in a treaty e.g a reduced withholding tax on dividends. These investments can also be expected to be very few. How many companies in for instance Trinidad and Tobago are doing business in Sweden where they can have any benefits of the treaty? Moreover, our domestic tax regime for foreign residents already dovetails the OECD model in many respects which also reduces the importance of a treaty. This applies for instance to our SINK-regime for foreign residents deriving employment and pension income in Sweden and our definition of permanent establishments. The advantage of settling these matters in domestic law is that one gains complete control of the legislation, that one avoids problems of treaty interpretation etc. If undesired situations appear it is easier to correct them ad hoc. Rules on exchange of information, however, would of course always have to be drawn up in bilateral treaties.
2. And why not completely abolish the so called golden rule declaring that preference to the treaty should only occur when it reduces tax liability? There is no specific reason why this rule shall be considered carved in stone. And it need not be a general rule. Depending on the circumstances one could ordain that preference be given to the treaty in one respect and vice versa in another respect. For instance, one could prescribe that a treaty rule allowing the imposition of a source tax on interest should apply, despite that not being possible under domestic law, and at the same time, if desired, disallow the application of the ”effective management” rule (in OECD article 4.3) which represents an extension of the residence test under Swedish law.
3. When negotiating treaties Sweden should employ local tax expertise in the other contracting state to safeguard our interests. The purpose thereof would be to gain information about the finer points of the other country´s international tax regime and treaty policies. It is difficult for our negotiators to fully grasp such matters or to rely on the information provided by the treaty partner representatives. It could also be a good idea (in some cases) to retain this private tax expertise mentioned to provide current information of changes made in the domestic law of the other country or of important tax cases that could affect the application of the treaty.
4.Our treaties should be construed not to allow unwarranted tax avoidance for instance double tax exemptions. Subject-to-tax rules should therefore be considered both where Sweden is the state of residence of the tax payer and where it is the source state. In the commentaries to article 1 of the OECD model there are also a number of anti- tax avoidance recommendations that should be given consideration.
5. Anti- treaty shopping rules should also be studied, the reason being that treaties are bilateral and that the tax sacrifices provided therein should benefit only the tax payers of the contracting states. One should thus take advantage of limitation-of-benefit rules to a larger extent. One could also impose special taxes or restrictions for payments made to blacklisted tax haven recipients or tax priviledged companies in the other contracting state such as is the case in some of our treaties already. Malta and Switzerland e.g.are treaty partners where such rules already exist.
6. Our new domestic participation exemption rules have made such rules in our treaties unnecessary and could thus be abolished.
7. Due to new directives imposed by the EU e.g on withholding taxes such rules in our treaties can also be abandoned. On the whole our treaties should be adapted more carefully to the prevailing circumstances in each and every treaty.
8. More efforts should be given to negotiating bilateral information exchange rules working out the application of automatic exchange of information. Considering that bank secrecy in the wake of the finacial global meltdown has now virtually been given up as far as communicating the information to tax administrations is concerned such rules should more easily be possible to negotiate. The mere knowledge that a bilateral information agreement is being worked out should have a very positive preventive effect regarding tax payers harbouring ideas to hide their income or capital in such countries.
9. In the past, during a couple of years, we had a domestic law on the application of tax treaties. (It was introduced due to the panic that arose after the ”Kenya 1 ruling” by the Supreme Administraive Court.) One should consider if such a law could have posirive effects today. For instance, it could be used for a general rule establishing the relationship between domestic law and treaties discussed above. It could also contain the rule, which is now repeated in every law of intrduction of treaties, that the exemption with progression rule in our treaties shall not apply. Even better is of course to abolish that rule alltogether in our treaties. The new law could also be used for providing more detailed information to be provided by tax payers benefitting from a treaty.
10. More structured efforts should be made to prevent tax avoidance by the use of tax treaties. A well known and widespread abuse of our treaties is the tax planning regarding migrating capital gains and our ten year rule. This indeed is the specific area of taxation brought up by the National Audit Office. In that context one should consider if there is reason to restrict the ten year rule. In my opinion quoted shares should be exempted from the ten year quarantine and apply only to closely held shares. It is a well known fact that the negotiation of these rules in our treaties give rise to problems especially as regards the agreement of the quarantine period. In the French treaty it has been reduced to only two years. A possible solution would be to offer the other state a reversed credit mechanism in these cases so that this state is relieved of the obligation to give tax relief for the Swedish tax. Considering that the tax planning in these cases always is directed to low- or no-tax jurisdictions regarding capital gains, the loss of revenue to the Swedish treasury by such a credit will be quite negligible. Reversed credits could maybe also be considered in other situations.
11. One should renew the discussions on source taxation of royalties and impose a source tax on gross payments. Considering our general treaty policy of a zero source tax on royalties one could even consider abolishing such taxes alltogether in domestic law. Possibly with reservations visavi payments to tax haven recipients.
12. One should definetely discontinue the right of dual resident tax payers to deduct interest expense under domestic law when, at the same time no tax is imposed on interest receipts under a treaty. This is a senseless and pure corruption of our international tax regime. (For a long time such deductions have been stopped for corporate tax payers.)
13. In order to avoid conflicts of interpretation of treaties one should specifically spell out that they do not prevent the application of domestic anti avoidance and CFC rules of the contracting states. And why does our general anti avoidance rule not apply to our dividend withholding tax?
14. We have subject-to-remittance-rules with a number of treaty partners. How are they monitored? Probably not at all. Regulations hereon could be drawn up in the afore mentiond law on application of tax treatiers.
15. Treaties should also include rules of mutual collection of taxes.
16. Rules on taxation of foreign trust must be put in place. After the abolition of our gift tax such trusts have become very interesting tax planning instruments. And allways in such situations a lot of money is involved.
17. One should draw up a sheet for providing information by tax payers benefitting from tax treaties. A simple thing would be to oblige the tax payer to provide a copy of the tax return submitted in the other country.
The afore mentioned suggestions are merely the result of a spontaneous and unstructured brainstorming of ideas to be considered in order to improve our tax treaties and their application.
More important is to get started! And, as already emphasized, I believe that IFA/Sweden is a perfect institution for taking a lead in these matters and for inspiring a project of this kind.
Best regards
Peter
peter@sundgren.net
Stockholm January 17 2012
To the Board of the Swedish IFA branch
For quite some time I have been contemplating an idea where I believe IFA/Sweden with its expertise, integrity and experience could play an important role in the field of international taxation namely the function and structure of our tax treaties and the policies that should be adopted regarding these treaties.
As we are all aware, both the National Audit Office (Riksrevisionen) and the Federation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) have recently submitted quite critical reports to government and parliament for their long lasting neglect of our tax treaty network. This, it is suggested, has had negative effects for the competitiveness of our industry and international commerce. The National Audit Office has also complained that our information exchange has not been updated with important secrecy jurisdictions and that old treaties are still being abused for unwarranted tax avoidance purposes.
It can now be expected that the government will step up its treaty making activities but one should not be content herewith. Now should therefore be a good point in time also to take more interest in how our treaties are structured and to make proposals to this effect. International developments both in Sweden and abroad require that we take a closer look att our treaty policies. And this should be a concern not only for the government and the finance department but should become an issue for debate in wider circles. This also, as noted below, should also lead to considerations for changes of parts of our domestic international tax regime.
Today the negotiation of tax treaties takes place behind closed doors where the tax payer community is presented with the a final and signed treaty as a faite accomplie. Only the Tax Administration and the Tax Appeals Court in Stockholm are invited to express their views on technical matters of the initialled text. Only once, as far as I recall, was an initialled text regarding the treaty with Germany made public which also gave rise to widespread interest and requests for changes. Sometimes in the past the negotiators would inquire at the Federation of Swedish Industries and the Institute of Foreign Law about requests and ideas when a new treaty was being contemplated. The aforementioned report by the Federation of Swedish Enterprize indicates that this custom has been discontinued.
As mentioned IFA/Sweden would be a very suitable institution for taking the lead in a promotion of a new approach to the making of our tax treaties. I suggest that one put together a working party comprising a select group of IFA members representing tax payer, government ant tax administration interests to work out a report which could then be distributed to all members and discussed at a seminar.
A starting point for considerations of our treaty policy should be an examination of our own domestic, albeit unofficial, model tax treaty (which long ago I commented in IUR-INFO.) This in itself would no doubt give rise to plenty of ideas.
But I also have a number of ideas that could be brought up in a discussion of this kind. This discussion should be as broad as possible and as already mentioned cover also suggestions for changes of domestic tax law and various methods for the application of tax treaties:
1. First of all it could be questioned whether we should really have so many treaties as today and thus suggest that some of them be terminated. For instance, do we really, with all respect, need treaties with such countries as e.g. Mauritius, Zambia and Trinidad and Tobago? Instead of treaties one could consider having domestic rules for specific and less ”important” countries where Swedish investors – and they are probably quite few – could be given tax reliefs corresponding to those in our treaties. For instance full credit for the foreign tax or a credit for taxes above a certain level imposed in the other country. Investments in Sweden by companies in the pertinent country
could also be given the same treatment as in a treaty e.g a reduced withholding tax on dividends. These investments can also be expected to be very few. How many companies in for instance Trinidad and Tobago are doing business in Sweden where they can have any benefits of the treaty? Moreover, our domestic tax regime for foreign residents already dovetails the OECD model in many respects which also reduces the importance of a treaty. This applies for instance to our SINK-regime for foreign residents deriving employment and pension income in Sweden and our definition of permanent establishments. The advantage of settling these matters in domestic law is that one gains complete control of the legislation, that one avoids problems of treaty interpretation etc. If undesired situations appear it is easier to correct them ad hoc. Rules on exchange of information, however, would of course always have to be drawn up in bilateral treaties.
2. And why not completely abolish the so called golden rule declaring that preference to the treaty should only occur when it reduces tax liability? There is no specific reason why this rule shall be considered carved in stone. And it need not be a general rule. Depending on the circumstances one could ordain that preference be given to the treaty in one respect and vice versa in another respect. For instance, one could prescribe that a treaty rule allowing the imposition of a source tax on interest should apply, despite that not being possible under domestic law, and at the same time, if desired, disallow the application of the ”effective management” rule (in OECD article 4.3) which represents an extension of the residence test under Swedish law.
3. When negotiating treaties Sweden should employ local tax expertise in the other contracting state to safeguard our interests. The purpose thereof would be to gain information about the finer points of the other country´s international tax regime and treaty policies. It is difficult for our negotiators to fully grasp such matters or to rely on the information provided by the treaty partner representatives. It could also be a good idea (in some cases) to retain this private tax expertise mentioned to provide current information of changes made in the domestic law of the other country or of important tax cases that could affect the application of the treaty.
4.Our treaties should be construed not to allow unwarranted tax avoidance for instance double tax exemptions. Subject-to-tax rules should therefore be considered both where Sweden is the state of residence of the tax payer and where it is the source state. In the commentaries to article 1 of the OECD model there are also a number of anti- tax avoidance recommendations that should be given consideration.
5. Anti- treaty shopping rules should also be studied, the reason being that treaties are bilateral and that the tax sacrifices provided therein should benefit only the tax payers of the contracting states. One should thus take advantage of limitation-of-benefit rules to a larger extent. One could also impose special taxes or restrictions for payments made to blacklisted tax haven recipients or tax priviledged companies in the other contracting state such as is the case in some of our treaties already. Malta and Switzerland e.g.are treaty partners where such rules already exist.
6. Our new domestic participation exemption rules have made such rules in our treaties unnecessary and could thus be abolished.
7. Due to new directives imposed by the EU e.g on withholding taxes such rules in our treaties can also be abandoned. On the whole our treaties should be adapted more carefully to the prevailing circumstances in each and every treaty.
8. More efforts should be given to negotiating bilateral information exchange rules working out the application of automatic exchange of information. Considering that bank secrecy in the wake of the finacial global meltdown has now virtually been given up as far as communicating the information to tax administrations is concerned such rules should more easily be possible to negotiate. The mere knowledge that a bilateral information agreement is being worked out should have a very positive preventive effect regarding tax payers harbouring ideas to hide their income or capital in such countries.
9. In the past, during a couple of years, we had a domestic law on the application of tax treaties. (It was introduced due to the panic that arose after the ”Kenya 1 ruling” by the Supreme Administraive Court.) One should consider if such a law could have posirive effects today. For instance, it could be used for a general rule establishing the relationship between domestic law and treaties discussed above. It could also contain the rule, which is now repeated in every law of intrduction of treaties, that the exemption with progression rule in our treaties shall not apply. Even better is of course to abolish that rule alltogether in our treaties. The new law could also be used for providing more detailed information to be provided by tax payers benefitting from a treaty.
10. More structured efforts should be made to prevent tax avoidance by the use of tax treaties. A well known and widespread abuse of our treaties is the tax planning regarding migrating capital gains and our ten year rule. This indeed is the specific area of taxation brought up by the National Audit Office. In that context one should consider if there is reason to restrict the ten year rule. In my opinion quoted shares should be exempted from the ten year quarantine and apply only to closely held shares. It is a well known fact that the negotiation of these rules in our treaties give rise to problems especially as regards the agreement of the quarantine period. In the French treaty it has been reduced to only two years. A possible solution would be to offer the other state a reversed credit mechanism in these cases so that this state is relieved of the obligation to give tax relief for the Swedish tax. Considering that the tax planning in these cases always is directed to low- or no-tax jurisdictions regarding capital gains, the loss of revenue to the Swedish treasury by such a credit will be quite negligible. Reversed credits could maybe also be considered in other situations.
11. One should renew the discussions on source taxation of royalties and impose a source tax on gross payments. Considering our general treaty policy of a zero source tax on royalties one could even consider abolishing such taxes alltogether in domestic law. Possibly with reservations visavi payments to tax haven recipients.
12. One should definetely discontinue the right of dual resident tax payers to deduct interest expense under domestic law when, at the same time no tax is imposed on interest receipts under a treaty. This is a senseless and pure corruption of our international tax regime. (For a long time such deductions have been stopped for corporate tax payers.)
13. In order to avoid conflicts of interpretation of treaties one should specifically spell out that they do not prevent the application of domestic anti avoidance and CFC rules of the contracting states. And why does our general anti avoidance rule not apply to our dividend withholding tax?
14. We have subject-to-remittance-rules with a number of treaty partners. How are they monitored? Probably not at all. Regulations hereon could be drawn up in the afore mentiond law on application of tax treatiers.
15. Treaties should also include rules of mutual collection of taxes.
16. Rules on taxation of foreign trust must be put in place. After the abolition of our gift tax such trusts have become very interesting tax planning instruments. And allways in such situations a lot of money is involved.
17. One should draw up a sheet for providing information by tax payers benefitting from tax treaties. A simple thing would be to oblige the tax payer to provide a copy of the tax return submitted in the other country.
The afore mentioned suggestions are merely the result of a spontaneous and unstructured brainstorming of ideas to be considered in order to improve our tax treaties and their application.
More important is to get started! And, as already emphasized, I believe that IFA/Sweden is a perfect institution for taking a lead in these matters and for inspiring a project of this kind.
Best regards
Peter
peter@sundgren.net
måndag 14 november 2011
Aktievinstutflyttningsuppläggen sjunger på sista versen.
WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden no 5/November 2011
Peter Sundgren
-----------------------------------------------
Svenska bolagsägare har under lång tid undgått svensk beskattning av kapitalvinster vid en avyttring av bolaget genom att överlåta detsamma genom en underprissättning till ett holdingbolag inom EES varefter bolagsägaren utflyttat till en avtalsstat där skattskyldigheten för aktievinster vad gäller såväl svenska som utländska aktier enligt skatteavtalet ges till denna inflyttnings-/hemviststat och därefter sålt holdingbolaget. På detta sätt har alltså de skatteanspråk som Sverige alltsedan 1983införde i sin interna s.k. tioårsregel kunnat undvikas. Detta ”skatteläckage” har under lång tid givit upphov till skattebastapp i miljardklassen vilket nyligen föranlett Riksrevisionen att rikta kritik mot regeringens försummelser att ingipa mot de aktuella skatteflyktsuppläggen.
Av en interpellationsdebatt som hölls i riksdagen den 25 oktober i denna fråga framgår att åtgärder nu är på gång.
Här följer riksdagsprotokollet för den angivna debatten.
Svar på interpellation 2011/12:40 om åtgärder mot skatteläckage
Anf. 27 Finansminister ANDERS BORG (M):
Fru talman! Jacob Johnson har frågat mig om jag avser att vidta några åtgärder så att ett förslag om generella regler mot skatteläckage kan implementeras. Frågan är ställd bland annat mot bakgrund av Riksrevisionens granskning av Sveriges skatteavtal med andra länder där den så kallade tioårsregeln diskuteras. I Riksrevisionens rapport (RiR 2010:24) framförs att tioårsregeln har haft begränsad effekt när det gäller svensk beskattning på kapitalvinster som uppkommer när en fysisk person överlåter aktier och andelar i samband med utflyttning.
Tioårsregeln innebär i grova drag att kapitalvinster som uppstår vid avyttring av aktier och vissa andra tillgångar ska beskattas i Sverige under de tio nästföljande åren efter utflyttning från Sverige.
Så sent som i maj i år svarade jag Jacob Johnson på en skriftlig fråga om jag avser att ta några initiativ för att Sverige ska införa generella regler mot skatteläckage vid utflyttning (fråga 2010/11:476).
Jag instämmer i Jacob Johnsons bedömning att det är ett problem att tioårsregeln i vissa fall får en begränsad effekt. I den mån det innebär att inkomster undandras svensk beskattning är det ett problem som måste åtgärdas. Frågan om att förhindra skatteläckage är mycket viktig och jag avser att följa den noga framöver. Som jag angav i mitt svar till Jacob Johnson i maj är det en komplex fråga att ersätta tioårsregeln med generella regler. Det krävs en noggrann analys, inte minst när det gäller hur reglerna ska förhålla sig till EU-rätten och till Sveriges skatteavtal. Innan en sådan analys är gjord är jag inte beredd att lägga fram något förslag om att ersätta tioårsregeln med generella regler mot skatteläckage vid utflyttning.
Anf. 28 JACOB JOHNSON (V):
Fru talman! Jag börjar med att tacka finansministern för svaret. Det var ett ganska kortfattat svar. Jag kan ha viss förståelse för att Anders Borg inte har tid att skriva ett längre svar med tanke på det ämne som nyss avhandlades här i kammaren. Eurokrisen gör att finansministerns klippkort till Bryssel snart måste vara slut igen.
Ett annat skäl till det korta svaret, som jag också kan ha viss förståelse för, är att finansministern påpekar i sitt svar att jag har ställt en skriftlig fråga i samma ärende så sent som i maj. Underförstått borde jag ha nöjt mig med det svar som jag fick då.
Men om en ledamot följer upp en fråga med en interpellation någon tid efter att en fråga i samma ärende har blivit besvarad är ett tecken på att ledamoten inte var nöjd med det tidigare svaret.
Fru talman! Jag blev uppmärksammad på frågan om behov av generella regler mot skatteläckage i samband med behandlingen av Riksrevisionens granskning av Sveriges skatteavtal med andra länder. I denna refereras till att regeringen redan 2007, då Anders Borg var ansvarigt statsråd, delade Skatteverkets bedömning att det behövs mer generella regler för att komma till rätta med skatteläckage vid beskattning av reavinster som uppkommer när en fysisk person överlåter aktier och andelar i samband med utflyttning ur landet.
Den nu gällande tioårsregeln har haft en begränsad effekt eftersom det är bosättarlandet som har beskattningsrätten.
Problemet är tänkt att åtgärdas i samband med omförhandling av de bilaterala skatteavtalen, men detta tar mycket lång tid och är en svårframkomlig väg.
Det handlar om stora summor som undandras svensk beskattning. Enligt Skatteverkets riskanalysgrupp i Malmö 2007 beräknades skattebortfallet uppgå till mellan 1 och 2 miljarder kronor per år på vad som kan definieras som aktievinstutflyttningar av skatteflyktskaraktär.
Dagens Nyheter kunde till exempel i oktober 2009 rapportera att Skatteverket identifierat en skattekonsultbyrå som initierat överföring av 1 miljard kronor till 500 brevlådeföretag i en enda EU- och avtalsstat, nämligen Cypern.
Skatteverket menar att mer generella regler skulle vara ett effektivare sätt att komma till rätta med problemet, snarare än att omförhandla alla aktuella skatteavtal. Att omförhandla avtal är som sagt tidskrävande, och man kan då också riskera att andra för Sverige fördelaktiga villkor kommer att ändras i sådana avtal.
Anders Borg svarar nu, liksom tidigare i svaret på den skriftliga frågan, att generella regler mot skatteläckage är något som kräver en noggrann analys, bland annat av hur sådana regler förhåller sig till EU-rätten och skatteavtalen. Jag kan dock konstatera att andra EU-länder, exempelvis en del av våra nordiska grannar, Tyskland och ?sterrike, har infört en så kallad exitskatt för att komma till rätta med motsvarande skatteläckage.
Finansministern säger också att frågan är mycket viktig och att han ska följa frågan noga men att en analys krävs innan han är beredd att lägga fram något förslag om generella åtgärder mot skatteläckage vid utflyttning.
Men, bäste finansminister, jag undrar vad man gör på Finansdepartementet efter klockan tre. Skatteverket, Riksrevisionen och jag förväntar oss handling – gärna en analys, men framför allt åtgärder mot skatteläckage.
Anf. 29 Finansminister ANDERS BORG (M):
Fru talman! Det finns många gemensamma utgångspunkter i denna debatt för mig som finansminister och för Jacob Johnson. Det är klart att vi ska ha ett väl fungerande skattesystem, och det är klart att vinster som upparbetas i Sverige i huvudsak ska beskattas enligt de regler som vi har i Sverige. Det är så att säga den grundläggande utgångspunkten för vårt skattesystem.
Vi har ett problem med skatteläckage. Skatteverket har analyserat frågan och landar i slutsatsen att det handlar om betydande brott. Det är någon eller några miljarder i skattebortfall som inte kan vara motiverat givet de regler som vi har.
Detta är en komplex fråga, och det måste bedrivas ett fortsatt arbete i den. Det är inte omöjligt att hantera den. Det är så att säga inte grundforskning som behöver göras utan det är ett arbete för att få fram fungerande generella regler, och det arbetet måste slutföras. Det är klart att det måste bygga på en noggrann analys. Jag har därför mycket svårt att se att det i grund och botten finns någon stor skiljelinje mellan mig och Jacob Johnson. Det finns ett problem, och det bör åtgärdas. Det måste analyseras innan vi är framme med generella regler som fungerar. Jag har mycket svårt att se att Jacob Johnson skulle vara för att vi införde regler som inte fungerar, utan Jacob Johnson måste ha samma utgångspunkt därvidlag. Så snart vi kan komma fram i denna fråga desto bättre är det.
Anf. 30 JACOB JOHNSON (V):
Fru talman! Skatteverkets generaldirektör Ingemar Hansson besökte skatteutskottet förra veckan och berättade bland annat om verkets nya vision som säger att alla ska vilja göra rätt för sig, alltså inte bara göra rätt för sig utan också vilja detta. Det blir då lite lättare att till exempel betala de skatter som riksdagen efter en demokratisk process har bestämt ska betalas.
Ja, alla ska göra rätt för sig, men det finns en del riskgrupper. Sydsvenska Dagbladet intervjuade förra året en representant från Skatteverket som kunde berätta att ca 1 000 företagare utvandrar varje år. Ett hundratal av dem är förmögna fyrtiotalister – en ganska stor grupp just nu och en grupp med riskbeteende. I 10–20 procent av de granskade fallen hittade Skatteverket tveksamheter, och i ungefär 5 procent av fallen avslöjades rena skenbosättningar. Ofta handlar det om förmögna företagare som skriver sig i ett land med förmånliga skatteregler. Villan i Sverige överlåts formellt till barnen, men egentligen bor de själva kvar. Sedan säljs eller likvideras det familjeägda bolaget, och paret flyttar hem med sina pengar utan att behöva skatta för vinsten.
Ett stort problem enligt Skatteverkets representant är att den svenska skattelagstiftningen är både krånglig och uddlös. Effektivare regler som i våra nordiska grannländer, Tyskland och ?sterrike efterlystes. Dessa länder har också haft dessa problem, men de ändrade lagstiftningen och har nu så kallad exitskatt, vilket innebär att man ger ett fiktivt skattebeslut när personen lämnar landet.
Finansministern säger att det är en mycket viktig fråga men att det måste göras en analys om detta är förenligt med EU-rätten. Men, som jag skriver i min interpellation, finns det redan andra EU-länder som har infört detta. Dessutom kan jag tipsa finansministern om en doktorsavhandling som presenterades vid Uppsala universitet 2010 av Katia Cejie med titeln Utflyttningsbeskattning av kapitalökningar – en skattevetenskaplig studie i internationell personbeskattning med fokus på skatteavtals- och EU-rättsliga problem. I denna finns en analys som kan användas av departementet.
Finansministern brukar använda ett målande språk när han beskriver olika företeelser, till exempel att nalla i kakburken eller att åka fast med fingrarna i syltburken. Det är några exempel som skulle kunna användas om en del skatteplanerande utflyttare.
Det räcker inte att följa frågan, som finansministern säger. ?tgärder krävs. Och hur är det med den omtalade analysen? Pågår den, eller är det någonting som finansministern väntar på i godan ro? Väntar han på bättre tider?
Problemet med utflyttning av aktievinster genom utländska holdingbolag blev uppenbart redan 2001, och man har nu således haft tio år på sig. Det var i och för sig delvis före ministerns tid som statsråd. Utvidgningen av tioårsregeln 2007 blev bara ett slag i luften, och nu har det gått ytterligare fyra år utan åtgärder, allt medan miljonerna och miljarderna rinner ur landet – understödd av osund skatteplanering som man kan följa på olika exotiska webbsajter, till exempel den med det talande namnet taxzero.se.
Fru talman! Greklandskrisen lär oss bland annat vikten av att alla gör rätt för sig och betalar sin skatt. Därför är det allvarligt när lagstiftaren är handfallen och inte vidtar nödvändiga åtgärder mot sådan skatteplanering som vi diskuterar i detta fall. Det undergräver förtroendet hos de lojala skattebetalarna. Därför förväntar jag mig att finansministern övergår från att följa frågan till att vidta åtgärder för att lösa frågan.
Anf. 31 Finansminister ANDERS BORG (M):
Fru talman! Utgångspunkten för skattepolitiken är att det ska vara lätt att göra rätt och svårt att göra fel och att vi ska ha ett skattesystem som präglas av legitimitet och där medborgarna uppfattar att de gärna betalar sina skatter därför att de uppfattar att de får en rimlig skattenivå till en rimlig välfärdstjänst som de efterfrågar och känner behov av. Därvidlag står sig Sverige väl i konkurrensen med anda länder. Vi har ett väl fungerande skattesystem, och vi har ett väl fungerande välfärdssystem. Sedan kan vi alltid diskutera exakt hur höga skatter respektive hur mycket välfärd som vi har råd med vid olika tidpunkter.
Låt mig understryka att vi har ett problem här. Jag ska inte bli speciellt långrandig, för debatter bör rimligen mest föras på områden där man är oense, och jag tror i grunden inte att det finns någon stor oenighet här. Vi har ett problem. Det förekommer helt enkelt att vi får en brist på skatteintäkter. Det problemet ska åtgärdas, och åtgärderna ska bygga på grundlig analys. Analysen måste genomföras, och det ska vi naturligtvis göra med den skyndsamhet som vi kan.
Låt mig dock påpeka att Sverige är ett föregångsland när det gäller skattebetalningar. Vi har osedvanligt lite skattefel i vårt skattesystem jämfört med de flesta andra länder. Detta gör att jag kan dra slutsatsen att efter klockan tre arbetar vi på Finansdepartementet med grundlig analys för att så småningom lösa detta problem.
Anf. 32 JACOB JOHNSON (V):
Fru talman! Jag ska vara positiv och tolka finansministerns svar som att det verkligen pågår ett sådant analysarbete och inte bara som att finansministern efterlyser ett sådant analysarbete. Det får jag väl ta med mig. Jag hävdar alltså att finansministern har sagt att arbetet pågår, och då ska vi också se några resultat.
Jag kan avsluta den här debatten med att fortsätta på ordspråksvägen och sätta min förhoppning till att droppen urholkar stenen, även på Finansdepartementet. Efter skatteverk, riksrevision, skriftlig fråga och interpellation kan jag glädja finansministern med att de här frågorna även finns med bland yrkandena från höstens allmänna motionstid. Om finansministern till slut reagerar med förslag och åtgärder blir det visserligen inte tredje gången gillt utan i stället femte, men skam den som ger sig! Med detta får jag tacka Anders Borg för debatten.
Anf. 33 Finansminister ANDERS BORG (M):
Fru talman! Låt mig upprepa vad jag sade i min inledning: Jag instämmer i Jacob Johnsons bedömning. Det finns ett problem med tioårsregeln, och den har i många fall en begränsad effekt. Det är ett problem att man undandrar sig svensk beskattning när vinsterna har upparbetats i Sverige.
Detta är en mycket viktig fråga, precis som jag underströk i mitt inledande svar, och vår ambition är naturligtvis att se till att vi hittar en lösning på svårigheterna. Det kan man naturligtvis göra genom generella regler, men de kräver då en noggrann analys, och vi kan inte agera förrän den är genomförd.
Överläggningen var härmed avslutad.
Efter förfrågan hos finansdepartementet om det verkligen pågår något arbete i frågan fick jag följande svar (från Pia Gustafsson):
Som finansminister Anders Borg angav i interpellationsdebatten när han
besvarade interpellationen 2011/12:40 om åtgärder mot skatteläckage, pågår
arbete internt på finansdepartementet med en analys av tioårsregeln i 3
kap. 19 inkomstskattelagen. I nuläget går det inte att säga något om vad en
sådan analys kan resultera i eller när den är klar.
Av meddelandet framgår alltså att arbetet mot den aktuella kapitalflykten nu drivs på ett målmedvetet sätt. Att därvid observera är att det råder politisk enighet i riksdagen om ett behov av lagstiftning. Med hänsyn till, som ovan nämnts, att skatteflykten omfattar så stora belopp och avser kapitalvinster på aktieavyttringar är det inte uteslutet att de tilltänkta reglerna presenteras som en stopplagstiftning i ett föregående pressmeddelande från departementet.
Stockholm i november 2011
peter@sundgren.net
Peter Sundgren
-----------------------------------------------
Svenska bolagsägare har under lång tid undgått svensk beskattning av kapitalvinster vid en avyttring av bolaget genom att överlåta detsamma genom en underprissättning till ett holdingbolag inom EES varefter bolagsägaren utflyttat till en avtalsstat där skattskyldigheten för aktievinster vad gäller såväl svenska som utländska aktier enligt skatteavtalet ges till denna inflyttnings-/hemviststat och därefter sålt holdingbolaget. På detta sätt har alltså de skatteanspråk som Sverige alltsedan 1983införde i sin interna s.k. tioårsregel kunnat undvikas. Detta ”skatteläckage” har under lång tid givit upphov till skattebastapp i miljardklassen vilket nyligen föranlett Riksrevisionen att rikta kritik mot regeringens försummelser att ingipa mot de aktuella skatteflyktsuppläggen.
Av en interpellationsdebatt som hölls i riksdagen den 25 oktober i denna fråga framgår att åtgärder nu är på gång.
Här följer riksdagsprotokollet för den angivna debatten.
Svar på interpellation 2011/12:40 om åtgärder mot skatteläckage
Anf. 27 Finansminister ANDERS BORG (M):
Fru talman! Jacob Johnson har frågat mig om jag avser att vidta några åtgärder så att ett förslag om generella regler mot skatteläckage kan implementeras. Frågan är ställd bland annat mot bakgrund av Riksrevisionens granskning av Sveriges skatteavtal med andra länder där den så kallade tioårsregeln diskuteras. I Riksrevisionens rapport (RiR 2010:24) framförs att tioårsregeln har haft begränsad effekt när det gäller svensk beskattning på kapitalvinster som uppkommer när en fysisk person överlåter aktier och andelar i samband med utflyttning.
Tioårsregeln innebär i grova drag att kapitalvinster som uppstår vid avyttring av aktier och vissa andra tillgångar ska beskattas i Sverige under de tio nästföljande åren efter utflyttning från Sverige.
Så sent som i maj i år svarade jag Jacob Johnson på en skriftlig fråga om jag avser att ta några initiativ för att Sverige ska införa generella regler mot skatteläckage vid utflyttning (fråga 2010/11:476).
Jag instämmer i Jacob Johnsons bedömning att det är ett problem att tioårsregeln i vissa fall får en begränsad effekt. I den mån det innebär att inkomster undandras svensk beskattning är det ett problem som måste åtgärdas. Frågan om att förhindra skatteläckage är mycket viktig och jag avser att följa den noga framöver. Som jag angav i mitt svar till Jacob Johnson i maj är det en komplex fråga att ersätta tioårsregeln med generella regler. Det krävs en noggrann analys, inte minst när det gäller hur reglerna ska förhålla sig till EU-rätten och till Sveriges skatteavtal. Innan en sådan analys är gjord är jag inte beredd att lägga fram något förslag om att ersätta tioårsregeln med generella regler mot skatteläckage vid utflyttning.
Anf. 28 JACOB JOHNSON (V):
Fru talman! Jag börjar med att tacka finansministern för svaret. Det var ett ganska kortfattat svar. Jag kan ha viss förståelse för att Anders Borg inte har tid att skriva ett längre svar med tanke på det ämne som nyss avhandlades här i kammaren. Eurokrisen gör att finansministerns klippkort till Bryssel snart måste vara slut igen.
Ett annat skäl till det korta svaret, som jag också kan ha viss förståelse för, är att finansministern påpekar i sitt svar att jag har ställt en skriftlig fråga i samma ärende så sent som i maj. Underförstått borde jag ha nöjt mig med det svar som jag fick då.
Men om en ledamot följer upp en fråga med en interpellation någon tid efter att en fråga i samma ärende har blivit besvarad är ett tecken på att ledamoten inte var nöjd med det tidigare svaret.
Fru talman! Jag blev uppmärksammad på frågan om behov av generella regler mot skatteläckage i samband med behandlingen av Riksrevisionens granskning av Sveriges skatteavtal med andra länder. I denna refereras till att regeringen redan 2007, då Anders Borg var ansvarigt statsråd, delade Skatteverkets bedömning att det behövs mer generella regler för att komma till rätta med skatteläckage vid beskattning av reavinster som uppkommer när en fysisk person överlåter aktier och andelar i samband med utflyttning ur landet.
Den nu gällande tioårsregeln har haft en begränsad effekt eftersom det är bosättarlandet som har beskattningsrätten.
Problemet är tänkt att åtgärdas i samband med omförhandling av de bilaterala skatteavtalen, men detta tar mycket lång tid och är en svårframkomlig väg.
Det handlar om stora summor som undandras svensk beskattning. Enligt Skatteverkets riskanalysgrupp i Malmö 2007 beräknades skattebortfallet uppgå till mellan 1 och 2 miljarder kronor per år på vad som kan definieras som aktievinstutflyttningar av skatteflyktskaraktär.
Dagens Nyheter kunde till exempel i oktober 2009 rapportera att Skatteverket identifierat en skattekonsultbyrå som initierat överföring av 1 miljard kronor till 500 brevlådeföretag i en enda EU- och avtalsstat, nämligen Cypern.
Skatteverket menar att mer generella regler skulle vara ett effektivare sätt att komma till rätta med problemet, snarare än att omförhandla alla aktuella skatteavtal. Att omförhandla avtal är som sagt tidskrävande, och man kan då också riskera att andra för Sverige fördelaktiga villkor kommer att ändras i sådana avtal.
Anders Borg svarar nu, liksom tidigare i svaret på den skriftliga frågan, att generella regler mot skatteläckage är något som kräver en noggrann analys, bland annat av hur sådana regler förhåller sig till EU-rätten och skatteavtalen. Jag kan dock konstatera att andra EU-länder, exempelvis en del av våra nordiska grannar, Tyskland och ?sterrike, har infört en så kallad exitskatt för att komma till rätta med motsvarande skatteläckage.
Finansministern säger också att frågan är mycket viktig och att han ska följa frågan noga men att en analys krävs innan han är beredd att lägga fram något förslag om generella åtgärder mot skatteläckage vid utflyttning.
Men, bäste finansminister, jag undrar vad man gör på Finansdepartementet efter klockan tre. Skatteverket, Riksrevisionen och jag förväntar oss handling – gärna en analys, men framför allt åtgärder mot skatteläckage.
Anf. 29 Finansminister ANDERS BORG (M):
Fru talman! Det finns många gemensamma utgångspunkter i denna debatt för mig som finansminister och för Jacob Johnson. Det är klart att vi ska ha ett väl fungerande skattesystem, och det är klart att vinster som upparbetas i Sverige i huvudsak ska beskattas enligt de regler som vi har i Sverige. Det är så att säga den grundläggande utgångspunkten för vårt skattesystem.
Vi har ett problem med skatteläckage. Skatteverket har analyserat frågan och landar i slutsatsen att det handlar om betydande brott. Det är någon eller några miljarder i skattebortfall som inte kan vara motiverat givet de regler som vi har.
Detta är en komplex fråga, och det måste bedrivas ett fortsatt arbete i den. Det är inte omöjligt att hantera den. Det är så att säga inte grundforskning som behöver göras utan det är ett arbete för att få fram fungerande generella regler, och det arbetet måste slutföras. Det är klart att det måste bygga på en noggrann analys. Jag har därför mycket svårt att se att det i grund och botten finns någon stor skiljelinje mellan mig och Jacob Johnson. Det finns ett problem, och det bör åtgärdas. Det måste analyseras innan vi är framme med generella regler som fungerar. Jag har mycket svårt att se att Jacob Johnson skulle vara för att vi införde regler som inte fungerar, utan Jacob Johnson måste ha samma utgångspunkt därvidlag. Så snart vi kan komma fram i denna fråga desto bättre är det.
Anf. 30 JACOB JOHNSON (V):
Fru talman! Skatteverkets generaldirektör Ingemar Hansson besökte skatteutskottet förra veckan och berättade bland annat om verkets nya vision som säger att alla ska vilja göra rätt för sig, alltså inte bara göra rätt för sig utan också vilja detta. Det blir då lite lättare att till exempel betala de skatter som riksdagen efter en demokratisk process har bestämt ska betalas.
Ja, alla ska göra rätt för sig, men det finns en del riskgrupper. Sydsvenska Dagbladet intervjuade förra året en representant från Skatteverket som kunde berätta att ca 1 000 företagare utvandrar varje år. Ett hundratal av dem är förmögna fyrtiotalister – en ganska stor grupp just nu och en grupp med riskbeteende. I 10–20 procent av de granskade fallen hittade Skatteverket tveksamheter, och i ungefär 5 procent av fallen avslöjades rena skenbosättningar. Ofta handlar det om förmögna företagare som skriver sig i ett land med förmånliga skatteregler. Villan i Sverige överlåts formellt till barnen, men egentligen bor de själva kvar. Sedan säljs eller likvideras det familjeägda bolaget, och paret flyttar hem med sina pengar utan att behöva skatta för vinsten.
Ett stort problem enligt Skatteverkets representant är att den svenska skattelagstiftningen är både krånglig och uddlös. Effektivare regler som i våra nordiska grannländer, Tyskland och ?sterrike efterlystes. Dessa länder har också haft dessa problem, men de ändrade lagstiftningen och har nu så kallad exitskatt, vilket innebär att man ger ett fiktivt skattebeslut när personen lämnar landet.
Finansministern säger att det är en mycket viktig fråga men att det måste göras en analys om detta är förenligt med EU-rätten. Men, som jag skriver i min interpellation, finns det redan andra EU-länder som har infört detta. Dessutom kan jag tipsa finansministern om en doktorsavhandling som presenterades vid Uppsala universitet 2010 av Katia Cejie med titeln Utflyttningsbeskattning av kapitalökningar – en skattevetenskaplig studie i internationell personbeskattning med fokus på skatteavtals- och EU-rättsliga problem. I denna finns en analys som kan användas av departementet.
Finansministern brukar använda ett målande språk när han beskriver olika företeelser, till exempel att nalla i kakburken eller att åka fast med fingrarna i syltburken. Det är några exempel som skulle kunna användas om en del skatteplanerande utflyttare.
Det räcker inte att följa frågan, som finansministern säger. ?tgärder krävs. Och hur är det med den omtalade analysen? Pågår den, eller är det någonting som finansministern väntar på i godan ro? Väntar han på bättre tider?
Problemet med utflyttning av aktievinster genom utländska holdingbolag blev uppenbart redan 2001, och man har nu således haft tio år på sig. Det var i och för sig delvis före ministerns tid som statsråd. Utvidgningen av tioårsregeln 2007 blev bara ett slag i luften, och nu har det gått ytterligare fyra år utan åtgärder, allt medan miljonerna och miljarderna rinner ur landet – understödd av osund skatteplanering som man kan följa på olika exotiska webbsajter, till exempel den med det talande namnet taxzero.se.
Fru talman! Greklandskrisen lär oss bland annat vikten av att alla gör rätt för sig och betalar sin skatt. Därför är det allvarligt när lagstiftaren är handfallen och inte vidtar nödvändiga åtgärder mot sådan skatteplanering som vi diskuterar i detta fall. Det undergräver förtroendet hos de lojala skattebetalarna. Därför förväntar jag mig att finansministern övergår från att följa frågan till att vidta åtgärder för att lösa frågan.
Anf. 31 Finansminister ANDERS BORG (M):
Fru talman! Utgångspunkten för skattepolitiken är att det ska vara lätt att göra rätt och svårt att göra fel och att vi ska ha ett skattesystem som präglas av legitimitet och där medborgarna uppfattar att de gärna betalar sina skatter därför att de uppfattar att de får en rimlig skattenivå till en rimlig välfärdstjänst som de efterfrågar och känner behov av. Därvidlag står sig Sverige väl i konkurrensen med anda länder. Vi har ett väl fungerande skattesystem, och vi har ett väl fungerande välfärdssystem. Sedan kan vi alltid diskutera exakt hur höga skatter respektive hur mycket välfärd som vi har råd med vid olika tidpunkter.
Låt mig understryka att vi har ett problem här. Jag ska inte bli speciellt långrandig, för debatter bör rimligen mest föras på områden där man är oense, och jag tror i grunden inte att det finns någon stor oenighet här. Vi har ett problem. Det förekommer helt enkelt att vi får en brist på skatteintäkter. Det problemet ska åtgärdas, och åtgärderna ska bygga på grundlig analys. Analysen måste genomföras, och det ska vi naturligtvis göra med den skyndsamhet som vi kan.
Låt mig dock påpeka att Sverige är ett föregångsland när det gäller skattebetalningar. Vi har osedvanligt lite skattefel i vårt skattesystem jämfört med de flesta andra länder. Detta gör att jag kan dra slutsatsen att efter klockan tre arbetar vi på Finansdepartementet med grundlig analys för att så småningom lösa detta problem.
Anf. 32 JACOB JOHNSON (V):
Fru talman! Jag ska vara positiv och tolka finansministerns svar som att det verkligen pågår ett sådant analysarbete och inte bara som att finansministern efterlyser ett sådant analysarbete. Det får jag väl ta med mig. Jag hävdar alltså att finansministern har sagt att arbetet pågår, och då ska vi också se några resultat.
Jag kan avsluta den här debatten med att fortsätta på ordspråksvägen och sätta min förhoppning till att droppen urholkar stenen, även på Finansdepartementet. Efter skatteverk, riksrevision, skriftlig fråga och interpellation kan jag glädja finansministern med att de här frågorna även finns med bland yrkandena från höstens allmänna motionstid. Om finansministern till slut reagerar med förslag och åtgärder blir det visserligen inte tredje gången gillt utan i stället femte, men skam den som ger sig! Med detta får jag tacka Anders Borg för debatten.
Anf. 33 Finansminister ANDERS BORG (M):
Fru talman! Låt mig upprepa vad jag sade i min inledning: Jag instämmer i Jacob Johnsons bedömning. Det finns ett problem med tioårsregeln, och den har i många fall en begränsad effekt. Det är ett problem att man undandrar sig svensk beskattning när vinsterna har upparbetats i Sverige.
Detta är en mycket viktig fråga, precis som jag underströk i mitt inledande svar, och vår ambition är naturligtvis att se till att vi hittar en lösning på svårigheterna. Det kan man naturligtvis göra genom generella regler, men de kräver då en noggrann analys, och vi kan inte agera förrän den är genomförd.
Överläggningen var härmed avslutad.
Efter förfrågan hos finansdepartementet om det verkligen pågår något arbete i frågan fick jag följande svar (från Pia Gustafsson):
Som finansminister Anders Borg angav i interpellationsdebatten när han
besvarade interpellationen 2011/12:40 om åtgärder mot skatteläckage, pågår
arbete internt på finansdepartementet med en analys av tioårsregeln i 3
kap. 19 inkomstskattelagen. I nuläget går det inte att säga något om vad en
sådan analys kan resultera i eller när den är klar.
Av meddelandet framgår alltså att arbetet mot den aktuella kapitalflykten nu drivs på ett målmedvetet sätt. Att därvid observera är att det råder politisk enighet i riksdagen om ett behov av lagstiftning. Med hänsyn till, som ovan nämnts, att skatteflykten omfattar så stora belopp och avser kapitalvinster på aktieavyttringar är det inte uteslutet att de tilltänkta reglerna presenteras som en stopplagstiftning i ett föregående pressmeddelande från departementet.
Stockholm i november 2011
peter@sundgren.net
Prenumerera på:
Inlägg (Atom)