Brugtmoms for repair shops — the plain-English guide.
Every Danish repair shop that takes a used iPhone in trade and sells it on the shelf is doing brugtmoms whether they realise it or not. Here's what the scheme is, when it applies, how to calculate it, what SKAT expects in your books, and the workflow that keeps you compliant without a spreadsheet.
Brugtmoms is Danish margin VAT. On a used phone bought for 2,000 DKK and resold for 3,500 DKK, you owe 300 DKK VAT on the 1,500 DKK margin — not 700 DKK VAT on the full 3,500 DKK. The invoice to the customer must NOT display the VAT amount. You must keep a per-item purchase + resale journal for 5 years. a1RepairFlow does all of this automatically from the trade-in workflow.
What brugtmoms actually is
Brugtmoms is short for brugt-moms, which is Danish for "used-goods VAT". It's a special VAT scheme defined in Chapter 17 of the Danish VAT Act (Momsloven, §§69–71) that applies to second-hand goods, works of art, collector's items and antiques. For a repair shop, the practical application is used phones, used laptops, used tablets and used accessories.
Under normal VAT, if you sell a phone for 3,500 DKK you owe 25% VAT — 700 DKK — to SKAT. You collected 2,800 DKK ex-VAT from the customer, SKAT gets the rest. That's fine when you bought the phone from a wholesaler with a VAT invoice, because you can deduct the input VAT on the purchase. It's broken when you bought the phone from a private person who didn't charge you VAT, because there's no input VAT to deduct — the full 700 DKK comes out of your margin.
Brugtmoms fixes this. Instead of charging VAT on the full resale price, you charge VAT only on the margin (what you sold it for minus what you paid for it). On a 1,500 DKK margin you pay 300 DKK VAT instead of 700. It's not a loophole — it's the correct treatment, and SKAT built it for exactly this situation.
"Der kan ved afgiftsberigtigelse efter dette kapitel anvendes en margin, der fastsættes som forskellen mellem den samlede købspris og den samlede salgspris." Momsloven §70, stk. 1 — Danish VAT Act, Ch. 17
When it applies to a repair shop
Three conditions must all be true:
- You bought the device from a private person or any seller who could not charge you VAT (a non-VAT-registered business, a seller in another brugtmoms scheme, or a seller from outside the EU in some cases).
- You're reselling the device, either as-is or after refurbishment.
- It qualifies as a "second-hand good" — a tangible item intended for further use. New-in-box items pulled from your supplier channel don't qualify, even if the box is dusty.
Where it hits the repair-shop workflow:
- Trade-ins against a repair bill. Customer brings in their old phone, you knock a few hundred kroner off the repair quote in exchange. The old phone enters your brugtmoms inventory the moment you accept it.
- Direct used-phone purchases. Walk-in customer wants to sell you their iPhone for cash. Same treatment.
- Refurbished-device resales. You replace the screen on the trade-in and put it on the shelf for 3,500 DKK. The new screen itself is normal-VAT inventory; the device as sold is brugtmoms.
How to calculate it — the worked example
The formula is straightforward once you've done it a few times. Margin equals resale price minus purchase price. Brugtmoms equals 20% of that margin (which is the same as 25% on the net margin — the maths works out identically). What you keep is the net margin.
Trade-in → refurb → shelf → sale
| Step | Detail | DKK |
|---|---|---|
| Trade-in accepted | Customer gives us their iPhone 13 against a repair bill. Agreed value: | 2,000 |
| Refurb parts | New screen (normal VAT) — separate line in books: | 400 |
| Resale price (tag on shelf) | What the customer pays, VAT not shown: | 3,500 |
| Gross margin | 3,500 − 2,000: | 1,500 |
| Brugtmoms (20% of gross margin) | Payable to SKAT: | 300 |
| Net margin ex-VAT (before refurb cost) | You keep: | 1,200 |
The 20% is a quirk of margin accounting: a 25% VAT rate applied to a net margin equals 20% of the gross margin, because the margin itself is tax-inclusive. SKAT's guidance uses the 20% figure; your bookkeeping system should too.
What about the new screen?
The 400 DKK new screen you bolted on is normal-VAT purchase (you got a VAT invoice from your parts supplier). You deduct the input VAT on the screen as normal. Only the device itself flows through brugtmoms. The two VAT bases coexist happily inside the same resale.
What if the resale loses money?
If you sell the device for less than you paid for it, the margin is zero or negative and you owe zero brugtmoms. You do not get a VAT refund on the loss. If you want to offset losses across your whole VAT period you'd use the "global method" (globalmetoden, §71), but that requires a separate SKAT registration and is almost never worth it for a single-location repair shop.
What goes on the customer invoice
This is the piece most repair shops get wrong when they first start trading in used phones. Under brugtmoms, you must not state the VAT amount on the invoice. The customer sees 3,500 DKK and that's the end of it. If you print "25% moms: 700 DKK" on the receipt you've violated the scheme and the sale becomes a normal-VAT sale, which means you owe 700 DKK VAT to SKAT instead of 300.
"I fakturaen må afgiften ikke anføres." Momsloven §70, stk. 4 — VAT amount must not be stated on the invoice
What you must do:
- Label the sale as a brugtmoms sale — a line like "Sale under special margin scheme — second-hand goods" or (in Danish) "Særordning for brugte varer".
- Reference the relevant scheme by name (brugtmomsordningen) somewhere on the invoice.
- Keep the price as a single all-in figure — no VAT breakdown.
- If the same invoice has normal-VAT lines (a new charging cable sold alongside the refurbished phone), show those with their 25% VAT breakdown as usual. The two coexist on one invoice; they just occupy different lines.
What SKAT expects in your books
Beyond the invoice itself, you must keep a per-item purchase and resale journal. For every used device that enters your brugtmoms inventory, SKAT wants to be able to trace: who you bought it from, what you paid, when, what the device is (IMEI or serial), and — when you sell it — who you sold it to, for how much, when, and what the margin was.
Specifically for each entry:
- Seller: full name and address if a private individual; business name and CVR if a trader.
- Device identifier: IMEI (phones), serial number (computers), or an unambiguous internal reference.
- Purchase price, purchase date, and a copy of the signed purchase document.
- Resale invoice reference, resale date, resale price, and the calculated margin.
Retention is the standard 5 years under the Danish Bookkeeping Act (Bogføringsloven §§4-5). The journal and every supporting document must be reproducible for SKAT inspection on demand.
How a1RepairFlow handles it
Brugtmoms is the exact kind of regulation that eats hours of a shop owner's week if the tools don't help. Our trade-in workflow is built to make the whole scheme automatic:
- Trade-in intake captures the seller details (name, address, ID if required), the device identifier (IMEI/serial auto-filled from the device if possible), the agreed purchase price, pre-condition photos, and the signed digital consent. Each trade-in creates one brugtmoms journal entry on the spot.
- Refurb workflow tracks new parts (normal VAT) separately from the device itself (brugtmoms inventory) — no manual separation at checkout.
- POS checkout automatically applies brugtmoms when selling a brugtmoms-inventory item, hides the VAT amount from the customer invoice, prints the required scheme reference, and posts the margin VAT to your SKAT ledger.
- Journal + reporting produce the per-item journal in SKAT's expected format, every day. Monthly moms rapport includes a separate brugtmoms line. Export directly to e-conomic, Dinero, Billy or Uniconta without re-keying.
- 5-year retention is built in: journal entries, purchase documents, and resale invoices are immutable and auditable by date range.
If you're currently handling brugtmoms in a spreadsheet, the biggest hidden cost isn't the hours — it's the single trade-in you forgot to log, and the margin you can't prove was legitimate when SKAT asks. The trade-in feature page walks through the full workflow with screenshots.
What RepairDesk and RepairPlugin do
They don't. RepairDesk is a US-market product and treats every sale as a normal-VAT sale by default — fine for US sales tax, broken for Danish brugtmoms. You'd have to manage the margin VAT externally and reconcile it back manually. RepairPlugin is a WordPress booking widget and doesn't touch invoicing at all. For a Danish shop that does meaningful used-device trade, that's the gap that justifies a dedicated platform — see the RepairDesk comparison or RepairPlugin comparison for the full head-to-head.
Common edge cases
Trade-in against a repair bill where the device is unrepairable
Customer brings in an iPhone with water damage, you can't fix it, they accept a credit for a used replacement from your shelf. Treat the write-off device as a brugtmoms purchase at the credit value you gave the customer. If you later strip it for parts, the parts you harvest and resell separately go on brugtmoms too, each with its own margin.
Device bought from another EU country
Cross-border brugtmoms is complex and sits at the edge of the scheme. If you buy a used phone from a trader in Germany who already applied the German brugtmoms-equivalent (Differenzbesteuerung), you can continue in Danish brugtmoms. If they didn't, you probably can't. When in doubt, ask your accountant for this one specifically — it's one of the few areas where generic guidance can lead you wrong.
Business customer wants a VAT-breakdown invoice
If a Danish business buys a refurbished phone from you and wants a VAT invoice they can deduct against their own VAT, they're asking you to leave the brugtmoms scheme for that specific sale. You can — but then you owe VAT on the full resale price, not the margin. The customer gets 25% VAT to deduct; you lose the brugtmoms benefit. Decide which the business customer actually wants and price accordingly.
Giving the trade-in away for free
Occasionally a customer with a device of near-zero value will leave it with you "for free" rather than take it away. You still have to record it in the brugtmoms journal — purchase price 0 DKK is still a purchase. When you resell it (or strip it for parts), the entire resale price is your margin, and you owe brugtmoms on all of it.
The 5-minute compliance checklist
- Every used-device purchase is logged with seller details, device identifier, price and date.
- Every signed purchase document is retained digitally or physically for 5 years.
- Every brugtmoms resale invoice carries the scheme reference and no VAT breakdown.
- Normal-VAT lines (new parts, accessories) are on separate invoice lines with their own 25% breakdown.
- Your running brugtmoms journal rolls into the monthly moms rapport, separated from normal-VAT turnover.
- Negative-margin sales are logged with margin = 0 (not negative) — losses are not refundable.
Tick all six, and you can run brugtmoms indefinitely without SKAT surprise. Miss any one of them, and the day a SKAT auditor shows up is the day your refurb margin becomes a tax bill.