52 | Annual Report 2019 The housing cooperative complained about the decision of the National Tax Tribunal to the Ombudsman, who in this connection considered whether there was authority under the Tax Administration Act to make an advance ruling in the case. The transaction which the request for an advance tax ruling concerned was the decision of the housing cooperative to pay out DKK 360,000 to its members. Section 21(2) of the Tax Administration Act and the explanatory notes to the Act state that an advance ruling on the tax implications of a transaction for persons other than the person requesting the ruling can be made only if the latter has not yet carried out the transaction but is only considering doing so. As the transaction had already been carried out when the housing cooperative requested an advance ruling on the tax implications for its members, the Ombudsman agreed with the National Tax Tribunal that there was no authority to make an advance ruling. SKAT should therefore have declined the request for an advance ruling. The Ombudsman also agreed with the National Tax Tribunal that it was regrettable that the Tribunal had not checked whether SKAT had authority to make the advance ruling. The Ombudsman pointed out that, as a general rule, a decision made without the necessary authority is invalid, and he recommended that the Tribunal consider the consequence of there being no authority for the decisions made in the case. 2019-16. Legal effect of decision on partial cancellation of debt could not be made conditional on party’s acceptance of the decision A woman applied for cancellation of her student loan debt. The Danish Customs and Tax Administration, SKAT, (now the Danish Debt Collection Agency) replied in a letter headed ‘Offer of partial cancellation’ that it could offer her a partial cancellation of her student loan debt, after which the balance was to be repaid over a period of five or seven years. However, the partial cancellation was contingent on her accepting the offer within four weeks. If she did not accept the offer within the time limit, her student loan debt would be neither fully nor partially cancelled. The woman appealed the decision to the Tax Appeals Agency, writing, among other things, that she had declined the offer of a partial cancellation. The Agency upheld SKAT’s refusal of full cancellation but did not consider the question of partial cancellation. The Ombudsman stated that he had no grounds for repudiating the result of the decision of the Tax Appeals Agency that the woman could not have her student loan debt cancelled in full. However, in the Ombudsman’s opinion SKAT had no authority to make the legal effect of its decision on a partial cancellation of the woman’s debt conditional on her accepting the ‘offer’ within a specified time limit. The Ombudsman therefore found it regrettable that SKAT had used this procedure. In addition, the Ombudsman stated that the Tax Appeals Agency should have considered SKAT’s decision in its entirety, i.e. both the implied refusal of full cancellation of the woman’s student loan debt and the decision on partial cancellation of her debt, as the Agency could not assume from the circumstances of the case – including the woman’s appeal – that the woman was appealing only against the decision on refusal of full cancellation. If the Agency was in doubt whether she was appealing against both aspects of the decision, it should in the Ombudsman’s opinion have contacted her in order to clarify what she was appealing against.