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Sweden to send VW pollution tax bill?

Stockholm - Sweden may send a tax bill to automaker Volkswagen for undeclared pollution  of its diesel vehicles after it admitted fitting some 11 million with pollution cheating devices, the country's finance minister said Thursday.

Cars sold in the Nordic country have a tax assessed depending on the amount of pollution they emit.

Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson said on SR public radio: "If it is proved that the emissions were higher than they said then it is possible that certain cars were taxed too little."

Lost tax revenue

She said Volkswagen has been asked for information to help calculate how much the Swedish state may have lost in tax revenue.

Volkswagen said earlier this week it had sold 225 000 vehicles in Sweden fitted with devices that switch on pollution controls when they detect the car is undergoing testing and then switch off the controls when the car is on the road, allowing it to spew out harmful levels of emissions.

Volkswagen Sweden's chief executive, Claes Jerveland, told the TT news agency  that the company would look into the matter, noting that so far concerns had been about the motors emitting higher levels of nitrogen oxides rather than carbon dioxide, upon which the Swedish tax is based.

The tax is paid by car buyers, so the Swedish tax authority would may have some legal hurdles to clear before sending any bill to Volkswagen.

The world's biggest automaker by sales, Volkswagen has seen its market value plunge by nearly 40% since US authorities accused the company of having fit its cars with software to evade pollution controls.

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