FEPA News

FEPA NEWS 45 53 Developments in Philately The annual compensation paid by the government to PostNord has been abolished and new domestic postal rates came into force on 1 January. These are: Old rates (2023): No VAT New rates(2024): Including VAT 0-50g DKK 12 0-100g DKK 25 50-100g DKK 24 100-250g DKK 50 100-250g DKK 48 250-2000g DKK 75 250-2000g DKK 60 Domestic rates have more than doubled to DKK 25 (£2.89 or US$3.65) while simplifying the basic weight to a single rate for a letter of up to 100g. The basic foreign rate for letters of up to 100g is DKK 50 (£5.78 or US$7.31), with no VAT, an increase from DKK 36 before 1 January 2024. Letters greater than 100g, and up to 250g cost DKK 100, with the next step up to 2000g priced at DKK 150 The consequence is that Denmark is probably the most expensive postal service in the world. Danes using the domestic postal service are paying an up to 110% price while businesses can reclaimVAT, so their price increase is ‘only’ 70%. Two new stamps have been issued designed by Bertil Skov Jørgensen, taking their inspiration from the long running wavy line stamps first seen in 1905. DKK 25 for INDLAND (domestic use) and DKK 50 for UDLAND (international mail). Torben Lethraborg, Editor of Dansk Filatelistisk Tidsskrift, commented in issue 6 of 2023, “You might think that you can use the DKK 50 stamp for domestic mail weighing between 100 and 250g - but you can’t, as VAT is not included in the DKK 50. You must therefore pay with two DKK 25 stamps. And it’s even worse if you put two DKK 25 stamps on a letter abroad for DKK 50, because then PostNord gets DKK 10 too little for the service, as VAT must be paid for the two DKK 25 stamps.” Another consequence of the abolition of the universal service obligation is that PostNord is no longer allowed to call its new DKK 25 franking labels ‘stamps’. The Danish word is ‘Frimærker’, and in the consumer tax legislation paragraph 13, stamps (Frimærker) are exempt from VAT. The new stamps, including the HAFNIA block, must be described as ‘Postmærke’ (postal labels) in order to comply with taxation law. This has led one Danish humourist to plagiarise Magritte … Of course, the DKK 50 labels can be called stamps, because they do not attract VAT! Denmark has experienced rapid change through digital and online services in the past two decades, and postage is already commonly purchased online through the PostNord website. Buying postage in this way gives the user a twelve-digit alphanumeric code which can be printed on standard Avery L7159 type address Labels, 63.5 x 33.9 mm. Alternatively the code can be handwritten on an envelope in the format shown in Fig. 3. Fig. 2: Inland postage label with new postal values issued 2 Janu- ary 2024 used in a pastiche of René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (French: La Trahison des Images). Fig. 1: Inland and foreign posta- ge stamps with new postal va- lues issued 2 January 2024.