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Comment by falcor84 | Hacker News Reader

> You don't have to pay VAT on things you fix for yourself, because you don't pay yourself at all.

Just to be clear, if you're a VAT-registered tradie doing a job for yourself, you are obligated to pay VAT for the materials. Diverting vat-reclaimed materials for self-supply is tax evasion (which can be identified by auditing invoices). So legally speaking, the only money saved is the VAT on your own work hours.

Slightly ironically, self-supply is much easier and almost impossible to identify when devs use work-paid subscription services (e.g. Claude Max) on personal side hustles.

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-Besides, in some jurisdictions, the taxman thought of that.

If a Norwegian tradesman works on his own home, he's supposed to pay VAT on the value of the work he's done - not only on the materials used.

I suspect such work is being under-reported, though.

> If a Norwegian tradesman works on his own home, he's supposed to pay VAT

Do you have a link here?

Sorry, not VAT - but the value of the benefit you gain from working on your own property (presumably also if you're, say, a car mechanic and work on your own car, etc.) is subject to taxation. Mea culpa.

The obligation to pay tax only kicks in (as far as I can tell, IANAL) if the work is substantial and of a nature which requires professional skills.

Here's a recent link, though in Norwegian, I'm afraid:

https://www.fvn.no/abito/i/GM86x4/skatt-ved-arbeid-paa-egen-...

Jesus! Spinning this forward, this means: If I'm a professional wealth manager and I manage my own wealth during working hours (because office not busy right now), then I would have to pay taxes because I'm a finance pro applying my own skills on my own stock portfolio?

Presumably, yes.

IANAL, and I have only heard about a couple of cases where people have been taxed under this statute - typically carpenters having built or renovated their own homes or cottages.

(Their obvious disadvantage being, of course, that the result of their labour is very tangible - and that whenever you do any significant building work, you'll need permits and documentation afterwards, making it difficult to discreetly renovate something off the books...)

I have seen very wierd tax laws in other EU countries, but this is really "fresh": In that case I would somehow try to do it without someone noticing (so treat your neighbours well :-D) - this is similar to collect taxes on food that Ive grown on my balcony

I read the Norwegian article that was linked, and it isn't actually similar: you would only have to pay taxes on food you've grown on your balcony (and mean to consume yourself) if you are a farmer, are growing it during regular working hours, and have an insanely huge balcony.

Another thing that makes home construction a bit different in this regard is that you could claim to build a house for yourself, live in it for a bit, and then sell it on a couple of years later. That'd be an easy way to avoid or evade taxes. Not so easy with lettuce -- once you've eaten it, you've eaten it.

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