The new prime minister is already flailing

It's all allegations. Nothing is proven yet!
In big contrast to HTS' 5 year tax-deduction, that she was only allowed to keep because of the age of the case! Sad thing is, on company owner from Greenland had the EXACT same case, and was told to pay up! Sad, sad case...

To the world: Please don't judge us on our current Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, we , the Danes, made a huge mistake and regret our choice as clearly seen in the recent polls.

The article is a bit vague about the real truth about the tax case Ms Schmidt is a part of.

First Ms Schmidt send a request to the Danish justice department asking the be allowed to co-own her Danish residence with her British husband Mr. Kinnoch.

In the request she wrote :

"My husband is in Denmark every weekend from friday until monday every week the year round"

This statement would put Mr Kinnoch well above the legal limit of 180 days that is one rule as to when you must pay Danish tax.

When she had to account to the Danish tax ministery she suddenly told them that Mr Kinnoch was not in Denmark anywhere near 180 days a year.

The first statement that she gave to the justice department was also the same she told a ladies magazine a few years earlier when she wanted to paint a "Perfect household" picture to the voters.

Even though the Danish tax ministery is known to be tough when judging these cases they believed her even though she told otherwise on 2 seperate occations.

The Tax ministery also works with a term called "Life-interests" and many other danes living abroad has been ordered to pay taxes on the sole grounds that they had a wife and children living in Denmark. Also they look at work related activities and as little as one work related phone call or one business meeting on Danish grounds is reason enough to make you have to pay Danish tax.

Mr. Kinnoch admitted both to answering his phone and holding business meetings ..

The latest development shows that the tax boss that made the decition that Kinnoch did not have to pay taxes has now showed that 20 years ago he was a member of the youth party of the Danish social democrats and that he actually once ran for election in a Danish county for the social democrats. His independence has offcourse been questioned ..

Also Mr Schmidt personally have cheated the Danish tax authorities when she for 6 years in a row used her husband's tax deductables even though she was not allowed to.

This brought Ms Schmidt a totalt amount equivalent to ~26.000£ that she has not been ordered to pay because the case was too old.

She is perfectly allowed to pay the money but has decided that she does not want to return the money she got because she cheated and this has also made her loose voters.

So as you see, the case is far from as simple as you portray it.

Nothing wrong with the article. A nail biting cliff-hanger election sent the Social Democrats in government, only to reveal that their campaign promises were mostly hot air.

Throughout the campaign they insisted on a basket of promises that skeptics judged unfinanced. But each time they were confronted with this, they yelled terror campaign -a strategy that showed useful during the campaign, but collapsed when it came down to delivering after the election.

Rarely has a new Danish government started off so miserable. Not only has HTS’ government in 3 months mismanaged a number of cases corresponding to what it took the previous governments 10 years to pile together, but more worryingly, they have not been able to present a visionary plan for how to trim Denmark for the coming year’s challenges.

HTS and the Social Democrats are in deep trouble.

I think the reason why they didn't write about that "scandal" is that it's completely irrelevant to the case of Thorning Schmidt's government being a tremendous failure. That she has failed is close to being a fact. They have abandoned 8o percent of what they promised to do before the election and they have taken some serious beatings in the polls for doing so. No matter what side you are on you have to admit that, so far, Helle Thorning Schmidt has failed as primeminister. She has until the next election to make up for her mistakes so she still has plenty of time to prove her worth as leader of Denmark.

Not only is she only driven by the desire to rule she is also full of double standards.

She and a fellow minister Mette Frederiksen (minister for occupation and jobs) made a harsh statement about rich people that put their children into private schools and how this disrupted the public schools as they rely on both rich people's kids and poor people's kids.

After that they both put their own children into expensive elite private schools.

A fellow socialist that was the parti's spokesman on the issue called people that leased cars in germany for parasites that wanted to save few pounds on german but ended up sending much more money out of the country.

2 Days before the socialist party signed a new law banning the posibility to lease cars in Germany the leader Ms Thorning Schmidt herself signed a lease contract with a german company to lease a VW Golf...

Ms Thorning Schmidt has been very harsh on big multinational companies with thousands of employees that pay Danish tax from their wages because the companies themselves use a totally legal tax trick to move their revenue out of the country leaving them to have to pay nothing in tax.

She and the socialist party has called this a disgrace and even though NO law has been broken the socialist want to make a public website where they want to mention the companies that does not pay enough taxes in Denmark after the socialists definitions.

On the other hand she thinks it's an outrage that the newspapers as much as mentions that her ultra wealthy husband let's the Danish tax payers pay for the education and wealth of his 2 children without paying as much as a cent in taxes in Denmark.

When multinational companies pay no tax in complete accordance with the law they should be shamed publicly on a government website but when someone says that her husband is no better she says that it's just the media being hysterical.

Double standards galore...

It seems to me this article was written well before Christmas, if not I'm surprised you missed the far more sinister scandal that broke on Christmas/Boxing Day that pushed all other issues off the Danish front pages; namely the previous government's seemingly intentional misleading of parliament in 2004-06 regarding persons detained by Danish forces in Iraq that were handed over to Iraqi authorities. Information about mistreatment and downright torture of these persons were sent to the previous Danish government, which, unlawfully, did not share this with parliament. Danish forces in Iraq also used the so-called British-feint when detaining Iraqis; to get around the subsequent responsibility for these persons' plight, British forces were broad along on Danish led missions, and these would perform the actual physical arrest, thereby circumventing responsibility (which is not only utterly shameless but also incorrect). Anyway, merry Christmas and a happy new year. Cheers.

Allegations that Mr Kinnock, who spends his working weeks in Geneva, had fiddled his taxes emerged before the election. An audit cleared him of any misconduct...

That is not entirely true. Mr. & Mrs. Kinnock were found to have cheated with their tax deductions to the tune of £15.000, but the authorities decided - inexplicably - not to demand the monies repaid, since the case was more than five years old, a lenience not extended to ordinary miscreants.

Sorry Sus536, I speak on behalf of the majority of the Danes and as you well know the polls are correct. May I add that we, the majority of Danes, are deeply ashamed of our Prime Minister, our Foreign Minister and our Minister of business Affairs. Most Danes regard them as traitors to their country, and the working class over whose backs they became millionaires and are now riding the gravy train for now and the pension gravy train for life.

This has little to do with some of the more colourful suggestions by the Danish press - entertaining though they may be.

The backdrop is a very tight election result with less than 0.2 per cent parting the two main blocks. The PM's own party registered the worst election result in more than a 100 years. Her main ally - the Socialist Party - fared even worse. They were carried into power by their support base. In essence, the feeling amongst the electorate is that she was not elected, her predecessor was de-selected as were most of the European governments who precided over the start of the financial crisis. If the polls are to be believed, this is a deselction that is now bitterly regretted!

The issues the electorate has with Mrs. Thorning are two-fold:

First and foremost, she is a heavily divisive character by nature, having not contributed to a constructive agenda during her time in opposition. Danes are fundamentally a people of concensus and compromise and we are used to coalition and minority governments - we've known nothing else for the best part of a century - and parties are expected to remain constucttive even in opporsition. Mrs. Thorning has in essence waged a four-year election campaign and shot at everything the previous government suggested from economic policy to failing to supporting our troops in Iraq. She carries little or no credibility as a unifying figure and hence for those who did not wote for her has become a symbol of the next four years to be endured.

For those who did vote for her, there is absolute astonishment that the person who have run a four-year election campaign have had so little change and so weak an agenda. In the programme outlining the work for her governement, she starts out by accepting the previous government's economic policy - not exactly what her electorate thought they were voting into office!

Finally - the broken election promises. As mentioned earlier, Danes are accustomed to compromise and coalitions. Hence, when the PM stands up and firstly claims that the broken promises were a result of her block not achiving a qualifying majority (which they have never been within sight of in the last four years' polls....) and secondly that the promises were never made (they were plastered on the sides of busses in Copenhagen for months...) it smacks of a lack of humility that most Danes utterly despise, regardless of political affliction. In the more colourful department, one broken promise was blamed on a clerical error by the secretarial stafff drafting the governement's plan of action. That last excuse was widely laughed off by a nation fed up.

Bottom line is the nation feels like we have elected a person completely unfit for duty, unprepared for ofice and someone who seems to have no idea whatsoever of what she is supposed to achieve within the next four years.

Hardly the new beginning 50.2 per cent of the electorate were hoping for when they dropped the votes in the ballot box.

The Economist is generally considered a serious news magazine. In this case, however, the magazine is just repeating superficial stories from the Danish media, which have a heavy conservative bias.
If you probe a little deeper, you'll see that the Thorning-Schmidt government has actually fulfilled some election promises - there are others that have not been fulfilled, - not yet anyway. The government has redressed cuts in welfare payments to the poorest people in Denmark. It has prolonged the term limit for unemployment benefits, thus helping some 30.000 long term unemployed. It has increased funding for education and schools. The new secretary of the environment has started rebuilding previous green policies that were dismantled by the conservative-liberal government. In many areas the Thorning-Schmidt government has started putting Denmark back on track. It's a pity The Economist can only see the "scandals" depicted in the tabloid press.

@in.taco:
The Danish Social Liberal Party aka "The Radicals" are a part of the government. It is true, though, that they disagree with the Social Democratics on a fair amount of issues, especially the economic ones.

Sus536..

You say "Helle Thorning Schmidt has been Cleared of ALL charges regarding til Taxissue, launsched by a Trashtalkmedia"

That is actually NOT true.

The tax authorities has judged that she DID give false statements on her tax-papers and that she did receive an amount equal to 26.000£ but that they considered the case to be too old to ask for the money back.

A tax cheater is still a tax cheater even though the case is to old to prosecute.

Helle always made a point of telling that it was not even possible for her to give the money back but this has been proven wrong by tax experts in the last few days so there is one reason and one reason only that ms Schmidt is not giving the money she received wrongly back and that reason is that she does not want to part with her money.

Alledgedly she already bought a couple of Gucci handbags for the money ...

Helle Thorning-Schmidt has no problems at all.

The Economist forgot to tell the readers about how the former right wing government has been unable to form a tax litigation for people working abroad they are able to understand themselves, and thereby report troubles not existing.

The Englishman Mr Stephen Kinnock has worked abroad Denmark since 1996. And his wife Helle TS was a Member of the EU Parlament for 5 years from 1998-04, and she has been the bright shining relaxed Party leader of Socialdemokraterne since April 2005.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen the Danish Prime Minister from 27.11.2001 to 05.04.2009, and his successor Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen 05.04.2009 to 03.10.2011 apparently did what they could to fix a god tax law.

Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen employed in sequence 3 different Tax Ministers in his last 2 years and 6 months in his PM office!
Mr. Kristian Jensen who had been Fogh Rasmussens Tax minister from 02.08.2004, was kept until 23.02.2010.

That day Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen placed a 28 year old History student, Mr. Troels Lund Poulsen in the Tax minister chair from 23.02.2010 to 08.03.2011..!

Mr. Troels Lund Poulsen was equipped with an very expensive spindoctor who was married to the chief of a national right wing TV station – and secret information started to surface in the medias..!

After 1 year and 9 days rumors and smoke started to drift above and under the Tax minestry, and then Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen suddenly sensed a need to put a new Tax minister in the chair.
Mr. Peter Christensen became the new Tax Minister for 6 short months from 08.03.11 to 03.10.2011!

And here we are today.

The English people will soon be able to warm their minds and hearts in Helle Thorning-Schmidts clear talk and thoughts’.

Two quite important points can be made in regards to this article:

1. Regarding the drop in polls - this is a very common phenomenon, where the losers rise in the polls, and the winners drop. It seems to come from a disappearing interest in the elections among the winners, and thus they refrain from participating in the polls. "Now that we won, we can forget all about that election stuff". Also, there are suspicions that Voxmeter based their poll on a badly represented sample.

2. The danish government is actually in minority, i.e. the three parties cannot vote through a law by themselves. In most cases, either The Radicals and the Red-Green Alliance must agree (which they rarely do, since they are significantly different on the political spectrum), or Ms. Thorning must gather support from a party among the opposition - which is usually an unpopular move. In conclusion, it has become very difficult for the new government to realize most of their promises, as there was simply insufficient support to pull most of them through.

"Helle came to power because the previous government had cut down too much on welfare. The welfare-loving Danish electorate did not like to see the welfare state being demolished." Public spending increased under the previous government. When Helle called for a return to the spending under Nyrup, she was unwittingly calling for a cut in spending, not an increase.

I call every free nation to come and help us in Denmark. After the election we became a part of the former Sovjetunion. We cannot trust anyone in the new gouvernment, and their hate to people, who can make money out of their work, is going to stop many factories here. They will have to go to China. They don't give a damn for the labors, even they elected them.
The spokesman for the social demokrats says: We may give much more room for islam in Denmark.
With those words he made himself the most dangerous man in thi scountry.

Helle Thorning Schmidt has been Cleared of ALL charges regarding til Taxissue, launsched by a Trashtalkmedia called BT, whose journalists have close friends in the former government especially the former Taxminister Troels Lund Poulsen who is facing a serious allegation of misuse of power by letting Helle thorning Schmidts taxpapers leak from the ministery.. a case, who might lead to the court of impeachment.
As you can see this is very serious . It very unfair to Helle Thorning and his family. The right wing here are making noise because they themselves are in deep deep trouble!

My informations is just plain observations necessary for the readers to give them a full spectrum picture of the former right wing governments illegal deeds concerning Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Stephen Kinnocks tax payments.

Its also common knowledge that Thorning-Schmidt and Stephen Kinnock have used normal professional tax advisor's related to their employments to do their tax reports.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt while she has been a member of the EU parliament from 1999 to 04, and mr. Kinnock because he has worked for British Counsil in Europe from 96 to 09, and for the World Economic Forum in Schweiz since 2009.

Apparently her big dream has always been to become prime minister she never dreamt about govern a country. A previous adviser to the Danish Labor party described her as a “blank person”, a person without a vision and a person with modest knowledge and lesser wisdom.
Despite her lack of useful prime minister skills she had a strong will and an ambitious goal to become prime minister. The Danish people weren’t scammed they were well aware of that the package they voted for were an empty box. The voters did so because of the previous liberal government complacency and lack of initiative.
We certainly would be better off out but even better off without a government. EU fathered only a few great ideas one is Belgian no government system, next time we should adopt that.
Happy new Year
Otto Kjaergaard