Swedish Crypto Trader Taxed for 300% of His Total Profits by the STA

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There’s something plain wrong when governments tax citizens beyond restriction. A Swedish crypto trader found a government check for almost $1 million from the country’s tax agency. Linus Dunker claimed the demands are simply unrealistic. However, Dunker is not the only person experiencing absolutely unrealistic taxes from the agency.

There’s already a lot of traders receiving bills for millions of Swedish kronor since 2018. The Swedish Tax Agency (STA) seems overeager to prosecute swedish crypto cases since trading became very popular in the country. Last year, STA was quite busy and managed to open up investigations into the activities of over 400 Swedish traders. From the 40 investigations opened up back in 2017, that makes 10 times more investigations for a single year.

Many traders believe that STA is acting under orders to artificially decrease the interest in crypto trading. Henrik Kisterud is an STA control coordinator and he stated:

“2017’s results brought into light a lot of unrecognizable activities. This is why we were able to allocate more resources into crypto investigations in 2018.”

Dunker however, believes that STA’s demands are completely made up and make no sense. After all, Dunker is being charged 300% of his total profits. Between 2014 and 2016, he traded Bitcoin up to $2.7 million and made a moderate profit. The STA is now taxing his profits at an enhanced rate because he “failed” to deduct the price of his initial bitcoin purchase, which was paid in cash.

Swedish Crypto laws are very unclear even to this day

The STA was quick to note that this purchase by law, makes his tax burden higher. Of course the STA fails to mention that back in 2014, trading was classified as a “hobby activity”. The agency knew this of course and only reached out to Dunkers after 2016.

After being contacted, Dunkers included all crypto trades under the category of capital income. Since he was unsure of how exactly to declare the trades, he issued a note agreeing to any corrections if any of his reports were wrong.

He received no response from the agency until late 2018. To his surprise he was taxed 300% instead of the expected 30%. This means all of his personal trades are considered business activities rather than personal ones. The even worse thing is Swedish traders are now all at risk from receiving similar demands from the STA.

Dunkers is now forced to take loans and sell some of his company shares to pay off the ridiculous taxes. The deadline is January 28^th and he plans to seek help from the crypto community. A joint effort will be required to pursue the living process to a satisfactory conclusion. There is no way this 1984 type of taxation should ever be allowed to happen.

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