Confusion about the roles of public authorities affects citizens | 11 the authority has the necessary power to make the decision. Normally, the same requirements for legal power do not apply when the authority acts as private negotiating party. In these situations, the authority can act in more or less the same way as other private parties in the negotiation process and is also not bound by the Public Administration Act’s requirements for consultation of parties, reasoned grounds and guidance. If authorities have difficulties distinguishing between the roles of decision-making authority and negotiating party, it may affect the citizen’s legal rights. The Ombudsman has seen several examples of this. An offer or a decision The Ombudsman received a complaint from a woman who had applied for a cancellation of her student loan debt (Case No. 2019-16). According to the rules on cancellation of debts to the public sector, including student loan debts, citizens may have debts to the public sector cancelled – fully or partially – if they prove that they ‘are unable to and within the next few years have no prospect of being able to meet their debts’. SKAT (the Danish Customs and Tax Administration, now the Danish Debt Collection Agency) replied to the woman’s application in a letter headed ‘Offer of partial cancellation’. The woman was offered 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 not be cancelled – either fully or partially. The Ombudsman stated that SKAT had no authority to make its decision on (partial) cancellation conditional on the woman accepting the ‘offer’ within a specified time limit. In addition, the Ombudsman stated that it appeared that SKAT was not aware that a decision within the meaning of administrative law was made. He pointed out that SKAT used the term ‘offer’ and made the legal effect conditional on the woman’s acceptance. The procedure could give the woman the impression that it was a negotiation with SKAT acting as a contracting party – and not exercise of public authority which was binding on the citizen. Further, the Ombudsman pointed out that the woman might get the wrong impression that by accepting the offer she would commit herself to an instalment plan without the possibility of changing it, for instance in case her financial situation changed. In other words, the Ombudsman stated that SKAT had misunderstood its role as decisionmaking authority. When the authority negotiates with the citizen In another example, an authority also got the roles as decision-making authority and private negotiating party mixed up. The case was part of a larger own-initiative investigation at the Ombudsman institution (Case No. 2018-10). A man who owned a rental property wanted deduction for a number of maintenance expenses – among other things for upgrading the sewer system. SKAT had accepted deduction for some of the expenses and suggested in a so-called preliminary letter of intent (a kind of consultation of the man as a party to the case) that only a part of the sewer expenses were deducted.