pic: New York Times
Sometimes it’s difficult to do the right thing. Members of parliament, namely the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats are pushing for extending tax-free benefits to include parking spaces near hospitals and the lunches that ordinary people and local restaurants are donating to hospital personnel. The Social Democrats are saying that’s harder to do than it looks.
Benefit tax, förmånsbeskattning, is a system in which a tax must be paid for any work benefits given to an employee. For example, perks might be having a car for work, or a parking place, or lunches when at work. Almost any compensation for doing work, in the form of money or anything else, is taxed: When it comes to work perks, the employee must pay income tax on whatever perk they get, and the employer pays the social fees on it. (Yes, there are official flat rate social security contributions for each perk – a lunch that is included in a work day has a flat rate tax of about 98 SEK.) Perks turn out to be not so perky.
Back to lunches. The parties above are arguing that hospital employees in these Covid times should be exempt from these taxes, times being what they are. But the government is putting the brakes on. It is apparently hard to give one small group an exemption from the rule. SvD writes that the government is going to lighten up on the benefit tax for parking, but that it is doing it for all occupations, not just hospital workers, because of this difficulty. For the moment, it is suggesting a 1000 SEK rebate on the lunch benefit tax, but the opposition parties think the government should go further.
The Committee on Finance will be meeting on Tuesday to hash it out.