Tax deduction when paying salary
Before you pay wages to your employees, you must deduct preliminary tax. How much tax you must deduct is shown on the employee's tax slip. You must also inform the employee of how much tax you have deducted, the easiest way to do this is in the pay slip.
Employees have an A-tax assessment notice
A person who is an employee should normally have an A-tax assessment notice. This means that you, as the employer, must pay employer's contributions and make tax deductions from the employee's pay.
Deduct tax according to the employee's tax table
You need to find out which preliminary tax to deduct. There are two ways:
Ask the employee to give you a copy of their tax assessment notice. They can print or order their tax assessment notice via skatteverket.se (the Swedish Tax Agency).
About A-tax assessment notices at the Swedish Tax Agency (in Swedish)
You can also request information about the tax rate that applies to an employee’s compensation via our e-service “Fråga om skatteavdrag” (“Request information on deducted tax”).
Request information on deducted tax (in Swedish)
Tax tables at the Swedish Tax Agency (in Swedish)
30 percent tax deduction
In certain circumstances, you must deduct 30 percent tax from your employee's wages. You must do this if the payment from your company:
- is a supplementary income for the employee
- is a one-off payment together with the employee's regular payment
- is for short-term work (less than one week).
If you make a one-off payment together with fixed-term pay, you must deduct tax according to the one-off payment table. This may involve, for example, paying retroactive salary.
To the tax table for one-off payments at the Swedish Tax Agency (in Swedish)
Inform the employee of the tax deduction
You must inform the employee of the amount of tax you have deducted from their salary at each pay period. This is most easily done via the payslip.
F-tax
A person approved for F-tax is responsible for paying their own taxes and social security contributions. In certain circumstances, the Swedish Tax Agency may consider a person approved for F-tax to be an employee. One of the deciding factors is whether or not the work is performed autonomously. The assessment is based on the circumstances of the individual case. An employer must notify the Swedish Tax Agency if an employee refers to the F-tax approval in an obvious employment relationship.
Conditional F-tax (FA-tax)
A person who is employed and at the same time conducts business activity may be approved for conditional F-tax (FA-tax). This means that the person has both F-tax and A-tax at the same time. As an employer of a person with both F-tax and A-tax, the rules for A-tax apply to the employment.