Contribution crimes, tax crimes and other financial crimes can not only lead to long prison sentences for those behind them. It can also result in money, which would otherwise have gone to the needy, ending up in the wrong hands.
On July 1, 2024, a new force came into law that is intended to counteract incorrect payments from Sweden’s welfare system, which contribute to benefit violations.
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The Tax Agency sounds the alarm
Within a specific industry, for example, benefit violations occur that cost the Swedish welfare system SEK 175 million – every year. It is about subsidy violations that take place in Swedish dental care.
Due to the high sums that are wrongly paid out, the Tax Agency has now come out and warned about what it looks like and how, together with other Swedish authorities, they work to counteract the subsidy crimes.
Photo: Tore Meek/TT
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“The MUR initiative, Resilience in disbursing and law enforcement authorities, counteracts incorrect payments by increasing the number of tips between the authorities,” they write.
Every year, the Swedish dental care system pays out compensation in the form of both state and regional support to people, for sums that total around SEK 14 billion.
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Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT
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According to the Swedish Economic Regulatory Agency, ESV, it was estimated that the total extent of incorrect payments from the world travel system in 2021 was measured at between SEK 13 and 16 billion. It then corresponded to around two percent of the total payments from the Swedish welfare system.
In 2024, the government announced that it intends to introduce a new law on the obligation to provide information in order to combat the incorrect payments from the welfare system.
“This law contains provisions on obligations to disclose information for municipalities, unemployment funds and certain government authorities,” writes the Riksdag about the law, which came into force on 1 July 2024.
“The law aims to counteract incorrect payments from the welfare systems as well as fraud, rule violations and crime in working life. Certain authorities, municipalities and unemployment funds must be given the conditions to exchange information in order to counteract these incorrect payments,” the Swedish Tax Agency wrote about the law earlier this year.
Source: Tax Agency , Forte , The Riksdag
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This is how the subsidy crimes must be stopped
The Tax Agency is tasked with assigning F-tax to companies in dental care, reviewing the companies’ accounts, investigating unreported income and wages, and quality assurance of the civil registration register. One such example is the children who are incorrectly entered in the national register and are no longer in Sweden, because this can lead to incorrect payments of dental care money and child support, explains the Tax Agency.
“Försäkringskassan is the disbursing authority for dental support to care providers. A report from Försäkringskassan shows that 430 million was wrongly paid out in the part of the compensation that refers to the high-cost protection. Of that, 175 million is estimated to consist of intentional errors by private healthcare providers,” explains the Swedish Tax Agency on its homepage.
– The exchange of experience within MUR allows us to give better tips to each other and counter welfare crime more effectively, says Malin Fixedtax administrator who participated in the authority project in one press release.
In order not to risk ending up in a situation where benefits and allowances are paid incorrectly to people who are no longer resident in Sweden, the Swedish Tax Agency has now, in contact with Sweden’s regions and municipalities’ dental care network, developed a routine.
– Together, we have developed a routine for notification of incorrect population records when it is discovered in connection with missed dental visits, Fast concludes by saying.
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