Last autumn, the consultation period for a government investigation ended with several proposals to close loopholes around the tax on dividends.

According to the inquiry's secretary Niklas Lindeberg, it is difficult to say how much money Swedish taxpayers lose.

But in the investigation, a calculation is made of the so-called tax error for the tax on dividends for foreign shareholders, so-called coupon tax.

The investigators make the assumption that the tax error is in the same relative order of magnitude as for capital tax.

In that case, the tax loss due to the arrangements for coupon tax will be around SEK 1.9 billion every year.

But the figure is uncertain, according to the investigation.

Extensive short-term share loans in Sweden

There are several signs that the business of lending shares to reduce taxes has also been extensive in Sweden.

A report from the EU's financial authority Esma states that during 2014 - 2018, extensive short-term share loans were made annually around the dividend date in Sweden.

However, volumes have declined since then.

Try to calculate the dropout

In a master's thesis from the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen from 2019, an attempt has been made to calculate the tax loss on cum-cum with the help of the trading volumes around the dividend date.

According to the study, the Swedish state lost approximately SEK 750 million in 2018. Ole Andreas Dalsbø, one of the authors of the essay, tells SVT, however, that there is uncertainty about that figure as well.

No one knows exactly how much money European states lose each year in lost tax revenue due to cum-cum.

1,300 billion

In a study from the University of Mannheim, the professor of corporate accounting, Christoph Spengel, together with the German editorial staff Correctiv, examined how large the tax loss may have been in a number of countries in Europe due to cum-cum.

Spengel makes the assumption, which he believes is low, that at least half of all share loans made with foreign-owned shares in connection with the dividend are intended to avoid tax.

According to the calculation model, both Germany and France may have lost around SEK 300 billion each during the years 2000 - 2020. If one includes all the nine European countries covered by the study, the amount will be just over SEK 1,300 billion during the period.

Sweden is not included in the calculation.