It is not everyday we see a Danish minister of government bring out the rock and roll guitar. But the current minister of tax, Benny Engelbrecht, loves to sing so he decided to create a Christmas greeting in the form of a music video with his hobby band “Benny and the True Taxmen”.
Benny Engelbrecht is from Adsbøl outside Gråsten and has played music for many years. After becoming minister he has also jumped on the stage, most recently in Gråsten at the Apple Festival.
Now that the reality of moving to Denmark is slowly sinking in my sights are turning towards practicalities. I have heard that taxes in Denmark are eye-wateringly high so I decided to check things out for myself.
First of all I needed to figure out the details. In Malta, where I come from, it is relatively easy. As I haven’t lived there for a while now I asked a friend for help, and she immediately directed me towards the relevant government website which explains all the tax brackets quite clearly. The website also offers a tax calculator.
I tried to find a similar easy-to-understand description of the Danish system. However, even the google skills I have honed over years at university, including 3 years of doing a PhD, didn’t help! Most of the information I could find indicated that I would pay around 40-50% of my income in tax, but where within that range would it be?
With some help from Michael I, finally, came across a tax calculator by a fellow expat in Denmark, Paul Day. The spreadsheet is not the most user friendly application, but then that’s no fault of Paul I am sure! He also provides step-by-step information on how tax would have been calculated in 2009. (Printed the step-by-step guide takes up whopping 9 pages!)
It would be great if the information was updated as the calculator is every year. However, in the midst of a dearth of resources elsewhere this spreadsheet is the best resource I could find and does the job sufficiently. Do you know of any better resources? I would love to know!
Photo by TaxBrackets.org