You have forty years of contacts and a phone that still rings. Someone suggests you put a name forward, and there is money in it — a fee for the introduction, paid when the deal closes. It sounds like the easiest money you will ever make, and in a country where nobody asks your age before taking a phone call, it often is.
Then a second question arrives, and it is the one that actually decides whether the arrangement is worth your afternoons. Denmark tests part of the state pension against your other income. Not all of it, and not all income the same way — and the line between the part that is protected and the part that is not runs straight through the middle of referral work. Get the classification right and a commission is worth its face value. Get it wrong and a slice of it goes back out again through the pension supplement, without anyone telling you at the time.
This is a panorama of that decision: what the state pension is made of, what the income test touches, how the tax side is likely to label a referral fee, and what to ask before you agree to anything. One thing worth having running while you work it out is I am Beezy, where time given to videos, articles and advertisements is credited back to you — a far smaller stream than a commission, and a far more predictable one.
What actually changes when a commission lands on top of a Danish pension?
The folkepension is not one payment. It is at least two, and they behave differently the moment another krone arrives in your household.
The grundbeløb and the pensionstillæg are two different animals
The basic amount, the grundbeløb, is set at 90,528 kr. a year for 2026 by the Beskæftigelsesministeriet in its published rate tables. The pension supplement, the pensionstillæg, is 104,748 kr. a year for a single pensioner and 53,604 kr. a year for someone married or cohabiting, at the same source and the same year. Styrelsen for Arbejdsmarked og Rekruttering states plainly that the basic amount of the folkepension is not reduced. The supplement is the part that moves.
The income test has a floor, and the floor is not the same for everyone
The supplement is not reduced from the first krone. An allowance, the fradragsbeløb, sits underneath it: 89,400 kr. a year for a single pensioner in 2026 and 179,100 kr. a year for a couple, again from the ministry rate tables. Above that allowance, the supplement comes down. The authority puts the rate in the plainest possible terms: the pension supplement is reduced by 30.9 kr. for every 100 kr. of supplementary income a single pensioner has above the allowance. For a couple the reduction rate is 16 per cent where the spouse or partner has a pension entitlement of their own, and 32 per cent where they do not.
Work income sits outside the test, and that is where the trap is
Here is the part that changes the whole calculation. The pension supplement is not affected by the pensioner's own income from personal work, nor by a spouse's. Wages are protected. And since 1 January 2025, the authority describes income from personal work as consisting primarily of income liable to arbejdsmarkedsbidrag — the Danish labour market contribution. That single sentence is the hinge. A payment that carries the labour market contribution behaves like wages. A payment that does not carry it has to find another home.
| Part of the folkepension | 2026 amount (kr. per year) | What supplementary income does to it |
|---|---|---|
| Grundbeløb | 90,528 | Not reduced, per the employment agency |
| Pensionstillæg, single | 104,748 | Reduced by 30.9 kr. per 100 kr. above the allowance |
| Pensionstillæg, married or cohabiting | 53,604 | Reduced at 16 or 32 per cent depending on the partner's pension entitlement |
| Allowance before the test bites, single | 89,400 | Income below this does not reduce the supplement |
| Allowance before the test bites, couple | 179,100 | Same principle, higher floor |
Source for every figure above: the Beskæftigelsesministeriet rate tables for 2026, and the calculation page published by Styrelsen for Arbejdsmarked og Rekruttering. Both are worth opening yourself before you commit to anything, because your own household situation changes which line you land on.
Which label will the tax side put on your referral income?
Danish tax law does not have a single box marked "referral fee". It has several, and which one your arrangement falls into is a question of how the activity is organised, not of what the person paying you calls it.
Hobbyvirksomhed: taxed on the net, with no labour market contribution
Where an activity is small, occasional and not run as a business, Skattestyrelsen treats it as a hobbyvirksomhed. The net result is taxed as personal income and declared as other personal income. The guidance is explicit that no arbejdsmarkedsbidrag is payable on income from a hobbyvirksomhed. Read that next to the pension rule in the previous section and the consequence writes itself: the very feature that makes hobby income lighter to be taxed also removes the label that protects income from the pension supplement test. This is the single question to settle before you agree to any referral arrangement, and the only people who can settle it are Udbetaling Danmark and Skattestyrelsen.
A loss stays a loss
There is a second asymmetry that catches people who treat a starter package or a course as an investment. Under the hobby rules, only costs connected with earning the income are deductible, and a deficit cannot be set against your other income for the year, nor carried forward to later years. If you spend 4,000 kr. on materials and earn 1,500 kr., the difference does not come back to you anywhere. Anyone selling you a paid entry point to a referral programme is selling you something you cannot recover if it does not work.
The moms line is a separate question entirely
Registration for Danish moms becomes compulsory above 50,000 kr. of turnover a year, and the Danish rate is 25 per cent with no reduced band at all — no lower rate for anything. Note what that threshold is and is not. It is a turnover threshold for value added tax. It is not an income tax exemption, and there is no documented amount below which referral income simply does not have to be declared. The nearest thing to a general allowance is the personfradrag, 54,100 kr. for 2026, which applies across your income as a whole rather than to this activity in particular.
| Possible label | Labour market contribution | What it means for the pension supplement | What to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employment or an assignment treated as work | Yes | Behaves as protected work income | Who reports it, and under what arrangement |
| Hobbyvirksomhed | No, per Skattestyrelsen guidance | Ask Udbetaling Danmark how it is counted | Whether losses are being promised as deductible |
| Registered business activity | Depends on the structure | Ask before you register anything | Whether turnover will pass 50,000 kr. |
Where the work actually exists for someone with forty years of contacts
A panorama is useless if it stops at the rules. The practical question is which introductions are worth making at all.
The trades where a name is worth money
Referral fees cluster where the value of one customer is high and the cost of finding them is higher: trades and installation work, professional services, equipment suppliers, energy and insurance intermediaries. A retired electrician who still gets asked who to call for a new panel is sitting on exactly the asset these programmes pay for. What matters is that you know the person you are recommending well enough to be comfortable when it goes wrong, because it sometimes will.
What you can promise and what you cannot
Introducing someone is not the same as advising them. The moment you start telling a neighbour which insurance to take or which loan is better, you have stepped from introduction into advice, and advice in regulated sectors is not something a private individual can be paid to give. Denmark supervises banks, insurers, pension funds, investment firms and payment providers through Finanstilsynet. If the programme sits in one of those sectors, ask the payer to say in writing what you are allowed to do for the fee.
Written terms before the first introduction
Ask three things in writing: what triggers the fee, when it is paid, and what happens if the customer cancels. Programmes that will not put those three answers in an email are telling you something. Nothing about a referral arrangement requires an upfront payment from you, and a fee you must pay to start earning is the oldest pattern in this trade.
How the money reaches you, and what has to exist first
Denmark has a payment layer that is genuinely different from most of Europe, and it decides whether an agreed fee turns into money in your account.
MitID is the door to everything
Danish self-service — banking, tax, public services — runs through MitID, operated by the Digitaliseringsstyrelsen. Without it you cannot register anything, check anything or correct anything online. If yours is unreliable or shared with a family member who set it up for you, fix that before you start earning, not after.
NemKonto is for public money, not for commission
NemKonto is the account the public sector uses when it transfers money to you — the tax refund, benefits, the pension itself. It is not a general-purpose payment address, and a private company paying you a commission does not send it there. Register one anyway if you have not: money from the public sector that cannot find a NemKonto goes to a holding account, which carried 1.2 billion kr. for around 130,000 citizens and businesses in September 2025.
Being paid in a country that stopped using cash
Cash has become the exception here rather than the fallback: Danmarks Nationalbank recorded one shop payment in ten being made with notes and coins in 2023. MobilePay, with more than 4.6 million users according to its publisher and more than 4.5 million according to the central bank, is the wallet the country actually uses. Expect any credible payer to offer a bank transfer or a mobile payment, and treat "we will settle in cash next time" as a reason to ask more questions.
Steadying the months between commissions with I am Beezy
Referral income arrives in lumps, and the gaps between lumps are the problem. A small, regular amount does not replace a commission, but it does stop the empty months from feeling like a failed experiment.
What the range looks like in kroner
On I am Beezy you are paid for viewing content — videos, articles, advertisements — and the realistic figure is 5 to 15 euros a day. Denmark keeps its own currency, pegged rather than floating, and Danmarks Nationalbank publishes an ERM II central rate of 746.038 kr. per 100 euro. Applied at that rate, the daily figure comes out at roughly 37 to 112 kr. Look the rate up on the day rather than treating the conversion as permanent.
Where it fits in a pensioner's week
It fits in the dead time — the waiting room, the bus, the half hour before the news. It is paid out to the payment method you already use, and because the amounts are small and regular, it is easy to see whether it is worth the minutes. Treat it the same way as everything else in this article: ask how it will be classified for tax before the totals get large enough to matter.
Two calls to make before you sign anything
Call Udbetaling Danmark and ask one specific question: for the type of income you are about to earn, does it count as income from personal work for the purposes of the pension supplement, or does it enter the income base that reduces it? Then call or write to Skattestyrelsen and ask how the activity should be declared, and whether it will carry the labour market contribution. Two calls, one afternoon, and you will know whether a commission is worth 100 øre in the krone to you or noticeably less.
Then decide with real numbers instead of a brochure. If the arrangement survives both answers, take it. If it does not, you have lost nothing but a phone call — and something small and steady like I am Beezy is a far less complicated way to turn spare minutes into money that nobody has to reclassify.
