Swedish tax deductions for normal people
Everyone who lives in Sweden the bigger part of the year has to pay taxes on all of their income. The good news is that the declaration is filled out automatically, and if everything's correct, it's enough to sign it. But what are some things that get deducted from the taxes?
Deducted automatically
Ränteavdrag
You get a tax deduction for the interest on the loans you pay. This is changing during 2025–2027: previously, the deduction applied to all sort of loans, but going forward, only secured loans will be covered (that's primarily mortgages and car loans where the car is the collateral). 30% of the interest payments up to 100k SEK are deducted; if you paid more than 100k of interest during the year, 21% of the exceeding amount is deducted too.
RUT/ROT avdrag + Grön teknik
For a lot of services done in your home you can get a tax deduction. 50% of the price can be paid from your taxes for:
- babysitting
- cleaning, laundry, fixing clothes and textiles
- installation, repair, maintenance of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers, and so on, as well as internet connection cables and alike
- packing up and moving stuff to your new home
- snow removal
- gardening
- stuff like handling mail, watering the plants, turning off the water before winter, receiving deliveries and craftsmen
- and more (full list at Skatteverket's website).
This is called rutavdrag and you can use up to 75k SEK of your taxes per year to pay for these services. The way it works is you pay the already discounted price to the company providing the service. Then the company applies to Skatteverket to get the rest of the money. Provided that you have actually paid enough taxes in, Skatteverket pays to the company and sends you a document about it.
It works roughly the same for rotavdrag, except the discount is only 30%, the cap is at 50k SEK, and also the total amount of rotavdrag and rutavdrag together can't be more than 75k. Examples of services eligible for rotavdrag (full list at Skatteverket's website):
- renovations and repair
- installations and repairs of electricity
- digging drainage, ditches for pipes, cables, and similar
- painting, putting up wallpaper
- cleaning the roof, ventilation, drains, and alike
- installing and repairing baths, sinks, heat pumps, radiators, boilers, etc.
In all cases, the discount only applies to the services themselves, not the cost of the materials.
If you bought the service from a private individual and not the company, the avdrag will be the size of the employer tax (meaning you don't have to pay any). You'll have to send in a simplified employer declaration though (there's a service that helps with that for a small fee).
Grön teknik deduction works similarly — you pay a lower price, the company gets the rest of the money later from Skatteverket if you paid enough taxes, and there's a cap of 50k SEK per year for this. But it's a separate cap from RUT- and ROT-avdrag, so if you're very active with home improvement in a single year, you can pay 125k SEK from your taxes and not from your pocket. If there's two of you living together and paying taxes, that's 250k SEK. Keep in mind that the tax deductions reduce your reported taxed income, which is something that e.g. banks look at when you apply for a loan. Anyway, back to grön teknik. You can get:
- 15% off when installing a grid-connected solar cell system
- 50% off when installing a system for storing self-produced electrical energy
- 50% off when installing a charging point for electric vehicles.
The installation has to take place in either your or your parent's household. In case of grön teknik (unlike rotavdrag), the discount applies to both the cost of the materials and the labor. If you on the other hand buy the materials yourself (and not through the company doing the labor), the discount does not apply.
A-kassa
If you've been paying for an unemployment insurance (a-kassa), you'll get 25% of those costs automatically deducted from your taxes. For example if your monthly payment to a-kassa is 150 SEK, your tax will be reduced by 150 × 12 × 0.25 = 450 SEK (source).
Gåvor (charity)
If you donated to one or more Skatteverket-approved charities, each payment was at least 200kr, and all of them together were at least 2000kr, then 25% of your donations will be deducted from your taxes. But it's capped at 3000kr, you won't get a deduction larger than that.
Deducted if you apply for it
Arbetsredskap
If your job requires a laptop or a tablet, but your employer didn't provide you one and you had to buy your own, you can deduct the cost from your taxes. If you're using it privately as well, you are supposed to only deduct the respective percentage of the cost.
Resor till jobbet
Travel to/from work is tax-deductible if the cost is above 11000 SEK per year (next year this threshold value is getting raised to 15000). After that threshold is reached, you can deduct the remainder depending on how you travel:
- public transit: only if the distance between your home and your workplace is at least 2km
- car or motorbike: only if the distance between your home and your workplace is at least 5km and you win at least 2 hours per day by traveling like this instead of taking the public transit (or you use the car in your job a lot, or there is no public transit where you live)
- bicycle: you can deduct 350kr for that too (but the 11k threshold should be met first, so, don't know how much that helps).
Uthyrning av bostad
If you're renting out your apartment, the tax deduction is 40k SEK + the part of monthly fee (to the BRF) or rent that covers the rented out part of the apartment. For houses and ägarlägenhet (the apartments you own yourself without any BRF), it's 40k SEK + 20% of the rental income.
Arbetssökande
If you're looking for a job and getting money from a-kassa, you can get a tax deduction for costs like traveling for job interviews if those costs exceed 5000 kr.
Bostadsförsäljning
If you sold an apartment or a house during the year you're declaring taxes for, you'll have to tell Skatteverket how much profit you've made. Apart from the price you paid to buy the house in the first place and your expenses to sell it (paying to the realtor, getting it photographed, advertising it), the costs for recent renovations and new construction might qualify. I'll take it up in another guide, there's a lot of details there.
Advokat- och rättegångskostnader
You can deduct legal and litigation costs if the purpose of the proceedings was to get or retain income and if you had reasonable cause to pursue a legal proceeding. Examples: disputes about wage claims, severance pay, termination from a job, or getting money from Försäkringskassan. The costs can only be deducted if you got taxable income as a result of the proceedings.
What does not give a deduction
Working from home
Skatteverket got a lot of questions about this during the pandemic, and no, working from home does not generally give any tax deduction entitlement. The rules are pretty strict here; to be eligible, your home office has to be separated from the rest of your home, it should be unusable for anything other than work, your employer has to provide no workplace for you, your home must be bigger than it would've been if you didn't have to work at home... It's a lot. If you satisfy Skatteverket's requirements, you can only apply for a deduction of the costs that exceeded 5000kr, and those are specifically the additional costs, e.g. for heating up the home office, not the fixed costs like a power grid fee.
Children/dependents
Since taxation is individual in Sweden and child benefits are paid out to everyone, there are no deductions to be had based on family composition.
Medical expenses
Due to the public healthcare system, there are no tax deductions for medical expenses in Sweden.