Guidance for letters and terms used
Three typical types of letter you may receive
- Reminder
In a reminder letter, we inform you that you have not paid your debt to public authorities. We encourage you to pay. - Notice
In a notice letter, we inform you that we will soon determine how we will collect your debt. You have time to react before we decide how you are to pay. - Decision
In a decision letter, we tell you that we have now determined how we will collect your debt.
Is this the first time you receive a letter from us?
Watch the video (in Danish) to see why we’re writing to you.
Click on a letter header to see what is important in the letter
We inform you that you have debt to public authorities. In the letter, you can see how to pay off the debt.
We inform you that, as a general rule, the debt accrues interest on a day-to-day basis.
We enclose a debt statement showing which debt the letter concerns.
If you have problems with paying the debt, please contact us to learn more about your options.
Read more under If you can´t pay your debt.
We inform you that you have debt to public authorities. In the letter, you can see how to pay off the debt.
We inform you that, as a general rule, the debt accrues interest on a day-to-day basis.
We enclose a debt statement showing which debt the letter concerns.
If you have problems with paying the debt, please contact us to learn more about your options.
Read more under If you can´t pay your debt.
We are writing to give you notice that we can withhold part of your income to pay off your debt. If you pay the debt by the due date, you will avoid withholding of part of your income.
If you have any comments on the letter, please notify us within 14 days. In the letter, you can see what other options you have before we make a decision.
We inform you that, as a general rule, the debt accrues interest on a day-to-day basis.
We enclose a debt statement showing which debt the letter concerns.
Read more under We can withhold part of your income
We are writing to you because we have decided to withhold part of your income to pay off your debt. This means that we are increasing the withholding rate on your tax card, so that you will pay off your debt on an ongoing basis.
We enclose a debt statement showing which debt the letter concerns.
The letter also describes how you can appeal the decision.
Read more under We can withhold part of your income
We inform you that money is due to you from public authorities and that we have used the money to pay off your debt to public authorities. If there is any money left over, we will pay it into your NemKonto.
In the letter, you can see:
- the amount due to you and where it comes from (e.g. overpaid tax)
- how much of the amount we have used to pay off your debt and what the debt concerns
- how to appeal the decision.
Read more under We can offset your debt
We inform you that money is due to you from public authorities and that we have used the money to pay off your debt to public authorities. If there is any money left over, we will pay it into your NemKonto.
In the letter, you can see:
- the amount due to you and where it comes from (e.g. overpaid tax)
- how much of the amount we have used to pay off your debt and what the debt concerns
- how to appeal the decision.
Read more under We can offset your debt
Terms A-E
Assignment concerns where your money or debt goes. There is a sender and a recipient – so it is called an assignment.
If you have made an assignment, this means that you have given another party the right to a payment due to you. This might be the payment of any overpaid tax for a given income year.
Read more on the Danish Assignment (Transport) page.
If we cancel your debt, this means that we have decided that you either do not have to pay your debt or only have to pay some of it.
You can apply for cancellation of your debt. Read more on the You can apply for cancellation page.
A claim is a debt. Claims are the same as debt items.
A creditor is the public authority to which you owe money. The task of the Danish Debt Collection Agency (Gældsstyrelsen) is to recover (collect) the debt owed to your creditors.
Credit balance is the amount due to you. The credit balance is therefore the amount you are owed.
The difference between ‘demand’ and ‘collect’:
- Demand
When you receive a reminder from the public authority to which you owe money, this means that they are sending you a payment demand. If you fail to pay, the public authority will ask us to help recover the money. - Collect
When the Debt Collection Agency has been given the task of recovering the money from you, we can collect your debt. We may use certain methods to collect the debt, such as withholding of your income or using your overpaid tax to pay your debt.
See on whose behalf we collect debt (in Danish).
See how we collect debt: If you fail to pay your debt
DMI is an older collection system that we still use to handle deposits. DMI stands for ‘Debitor Motor til Inddrivelse’ (Debtor engine for collection).
If the debt is unresolved/non-eligible, this means that your debt may be barred by limitation, or we may have incorrect information about it. We must therefore first investigate the debt before we know whether we can use your deposit to pay off the debt.
In the debt statement, we mark unresolved debt by inserting a # after the debt item’s claim ID number. Most of our letters will include a debt statement.
You can read more on the Unresolved debt page.
If you do not pay your debt, we can levy execution. This means that we take some of your assets as security. If you still do not pay your debt, we can arrange a compulsory sale of these assets and use the proceeds to pay your debt.
Read more about execution on the We may levy execution on your belongings page.
Terms F-W
If money is due to you, for us this means that you are owed money by public authorities. This might be overpaid tax, payment of child and youth benefit (BUY) or green vehicle tax. However, this does not mean that the money will always be paid out to you. If you also have debt to public authorities, in some cases we can instead use the money to pay off your debt.
Read more on the We can offset your debt page.
If you are owed money by public authorities, we can use the amount to pay off your debt to public authorities. We call this offsetting.
You can read more about offsetting on the We can set off your debt page.
PSRM stands for ‘Public Sector Revenue Management’. PSRM is our newest collection system.
SAP38 is an older collection system.
In some letters, you can see debt with the text ‘SAP38’, which is typically a reminder fee from the Danish Motor Vehicle Agency (Motorstyrelsen), e.g. green vehicle tax.
SAP 38 is an accounting system to handle taxes and duties under section 38 of the Danish Finance Act (Finansloven), but is also used in the area of vehicle tax and pension returns.
If you do not pay your debt to public authorities, we can deduct money from your income to pay the debt. We do this by increasing the withholding rate on your tax card. This means that you receive less of your income than you would otherwise have received.
Read more on the We can withhold part of your income page.
When we write off your debt, this means that you no longer owe the amount. You cannot apply to have your debt written off. This is something we assess on an ongoing basis. You will be notified if we write off your debt.
Read more on the We assess whether debt is to be written off page.