Statistical processing

Source data

VAT declarations, i.e., monthly, quarterly or semi-annual reports (forms) submitted to the Central Customs and Tax Administration in connection with the payment of VAT.

Background information from the Danish Business Register is also used.

Frequency of data collection

Monthly, quarterly or semi-annually.

The yearly turnover of a firm determines its VAT declaration frequency. The frequency is monthly if the amount exceeds DKK 50 million, quarterly in the interval between DKK 5 million and DKK 50 million, and half-yearly if it is less than DKK 5 million.

COVID-19: The tax return deadlines have been postponed, for more Information

Data collection

Data comes from VAT declarations submitted to the Central Customs and Tax Administration.

Data validation

Error detections are made at the industry and enterprise level.

Data compilation

The VAT is reported to the Danish Tax Agency on the level of SE-numbers and the turnover is published for each corresponding CVR number(s). In this connection, a redistribution of jointly reported units is made to the relevant firms.

Reports that were not received by Statistics Denmark at the date of publication are imputed. This typically occurs if the firm does not yet have a reporting deadline, because it reports quarterly or half-yearly.

Imputed amounts are based on the average of the growth rates from last to current month in the current years and the last 2 years for each 19-standard group to which the firm belongs, as well as on the firm's reporting for last month. The firm's latest report is multiplied by the industry group's rate of increase. Firms whose latest reporting was negative are imputed with the value of DKK 0 to avoid large negative values. For quarterly / half-year reporters, a missing month is imputed by first imputating the entire quarter / half year and then distributing to months. A quarter / half-year is imputed just like the monthly reports on the basis of the latest reporting and the average of current and last 2 years' growth rates from last to current quarter / half-year. The distribution of a quarterly / half-yearly report to months takes place according to a distribution key based on the distribution of monthly reports over the months in the relevant period. Here we assume that the distribution of quarterly / half-yearly reports is the same as for the monthly reports. The distribution of quarterly and half-yearly reports to months is based on monthly reports in the firms's 127-standard group and thus not on the 19-standard group as the imputations. Once Statistics Denmark has received the reports from monthly and quarterly reports they are distributed according to the distribution of monthly reports in the relevant 127-standard group.

For distribution forwards in time, a distribution key is calculated for each 127-standard group based on the ratio between the current month and last month in the previous quarter / half year from the monthly reporters. For example, the distribution key for quarterly reports in October in a given 127-standard group is: (total sales for the monthly reports in October) / (total sales for the monthly reports in September). This ratio is multiplied by the September sale of the firm to get the imputed sales for October of the firm.

In cases where a firm has not reported 2 months in a row, the latest imputation is based on the previous imputation. For all types of reporting a max of 2 successive reports are imputed. In the case of 3 successive missing reports, all the missing reports are set to DKK 0.

Post-declarations, i.e. corrections made by firms for earlier periods are distributed over the relevant months. In connection with a publication, data is aggregated to the official industry groups and the sales in the 19-standard group are seasonally adjusted.

COVID-19: The estimate of the Companies' purchases and sales for March 2020 and the coming months contain greater uncertainty than usual. Due to COVID-19 both a VAT declaration and a VAT payment have been postponed. Many companies have nevertheless chose to use the opportunity to declare VAT at the ordinary deadline. In March 2020, the tax return covers 70 per cent. of the companies' total sales, against 85 per cent. in March 2019. The remaining 30 per cent. of the total sales, it is primarily in medium-sized companies that specify VAT on a quarterly basis and in small companies that specify VAT on a whale-year basis. The VAT returns from these companies will be available in a few months. For those companies are available in the coming month and the imputation based on historical VAT returns. As the database is smaller, the imputations extraordinarily expands with supplementary indicators, including already published figures for retail sales and industry production and revenue, as well as new experimental data sources such as companies' electricity consumption.

Adjustment

There are not made any corrections of data except for what is already described under data validation and data compilation. Seasonally adjustments are made for the expanded DB07 10-grouping and the DB07 19-grouping. Further reading on seasonal adjustment can be found at seasonal adjustment.