They tell the Commission of Inquiry about Tax on Wednesday.
The three were tax ministers until 2010 and 2011, respectively.
– I did not feel that there were any red or yellow lights flashing at that time. Especially not on dividend taxation, says Kristian Jensen.
In 2015, it emerged that in the years 2012 to 2015, Tax had paid out more than DKK 12 billion – money that the tax authorities today do not believe should have been paid out.
The money was paid out as a refund of dividend tax, which some foreign shareholders should not pay. But no one checked whether the foreign shareholders who demanded money back had paid tax in the first place.
Internally in Skat, employees had pointed out that there was a problem with the payments being made without anyone being in control of whether they were justified.
But according to Kristian Jensen, none of those warnings reached his table as minister.
– In 2010, in the months I was Minister of Taxation, there were no particularly flashing alarms, said Kristian Jensen when he gave an explanation to the commission.
The Commission has been set up to investigate several aspects of Skat, which is currently divided into seven agencies. The first item is the payments of dividend tax refunds.
Among other things, the Commission has been interested in a report from the Ministry of Taxation’s Internal Audit (SIR) from May 2010, which, among other things, drew attention to the problem.
But that report never reached ministerial level, Troels Lund Poulsen explained on Wednesday.
– No, I am not familiar with the SIR report at the time I am Minister. It is only something that has surfaced after I quit as tax minister, he says.
Both Kristian Jensen and Troels Lund Poulsen noted in their explanations that the time they spent dealing with problems in Skat went to the problems associated with debt recovery and the IT system EFI.
The lack of debt recovery and the EFI IT system are something that the Commission will have to deal with once it has completed the payments of dividend tax refunds.
Peter Christensen was Minister of Taxation for seven months leading up to the parliamentary elections in 2011. His explanation on Wednesday therefore took less than 20 minutes.
– When I become Minister of Taxation, the election rumors were already running at Christiansborg. It was an election campaign, he explained.
– It also meant that as Minister of Taxation you had to work with things that could be an element in such an election campaign and not run and launch new ideas before the election campaign was announced.
Source: The Nordic Page