The Swedish tax return for newcomers: your first deklaration

In early March a document with your name on it appears in Skatteverket's Mina sidor, and most of the numbers are already filled in. That is your first Swedish tax return, the inkomstdeklaration 1, and for someone with one employer and no property the whole task is reading it and pressing approve. The lines it cannot know are the ones worth an evening.

Folkbokförd, or SINK

Which of the two you are in decides everything else, and it is not a box you tick on the form.

If you moved here meaning to stay a year or more, you are entered in the population register (folkbokförd). Your employer deducts ordinary income tax every month from a tax table, and you file a return every spring.

If you are here for less than six months and are not registered, your employer can deduct SINK instead: a flat 22.5 per cent in 2026, no deductions, no return. SINK is final, so there is no settlement the following spring and no refund. You may ask Skatteverket to tax you under the ordinary rules instead, and on a modest income that is often the better answer.

Look at your first payslip. If the tax line says a round percentage of the gross, you are probably on SINK; if it follows a table and moves with the month, you are not.

Who has to file, and when the return arrives

For income year 2025 you must file if your income from employment or pension reached 24 873 kr, or if your capital income reached 200 kr.

If you lived in Sweden for only part of the year, that threshold does not apply to you. The limit is 100 kr of taxable income. Anyone who worked a single month is over it.

The return comes to you whether you ask for it or not. Into a digital mailbox between 2 and 6 March if you had one by 1 March, as a PDF on Mina sidor from 6 March, and otherwise on paper posted some time between 17 March and 15 April.

The e-service opens on 17 March. Approving it digitally, unchanged, by 31 March is what puts you in the first refund round of 7 to 10 April. The filing deadline is 4 May, or 1 June if you have an extension (anstånd).

What the form knows, and what it does not

Your salary and the tax your employer deducted are reported to Skatteverket month by month, so they are already printed and usually right. Compare them with your payslips anyway. A month missing from the total is a twenty-minute fix in April and a letter-writing exercise in September.

Nothing else is reported. An account or a flat abroad, income from another country, ROT and RUT work invoiced last year, a commute that costs more than the floor, a second home kept for work: those are yours to add.

Adding has a price in time. The moment you change a figure or attach an annex, the 31 March route is closed to you and the refund moves to a later round. That is a reason to be organised, not a reason to skip a deduction you are entitled to.

The part-year year, and the 90 per cent rule

The basic allowance (grundavdrag) is the slice of income that is not taxed. If you lived here all year you get the whole thing. If you arrived in September, the reduced allowance is one twelfth of 0.293 prisbasbelopp for each month you lived in Sweden.

There is a way out of that arithmetic. If you declare 90 per cent or more of your earned income for the year in Sweden, you get the full year's grundavdrag even though you were only here for part of it.

A worked example. Tomás moved to Malmö on 25 August 2025 and started work on 1 September at 32 000 kr a month, so 128 000 kr for the four months of 2025. He had no earned income anywhere else that year, so more than 90 per cent of it is declared in Sweden and he gets the whole year's grundavdrag rather than four twelfths of it. He also drove to work and spent 12 400 kr on it during 2025; only the part above 11 000 kr counts, so he claims 1 400 kr. Because he added that line, he cannot use the 31 March approval, and his money arrives in the round of 9 to 12 June instead of in April. He files on 21 April, well inside the 4 May deadline.

The lesson from Tomás is not that the deduction was small. It is that he knew, before he clicked, which round he was choosing.

The refund, the bank account, and filing late

Skatteverket does not have your bank details unless you give them. Register the account in the Skattekonto e-service with your e-legitimation; it takes about three banking days to take effect. A foreign account has to go by post with an IBAN, a BIC and a bank certificate issued within the last six months, and that can take up to four weeks. Do it in February, not in April.

Late filing costs money rather than goodwill. The late fee (förseningsavgift) is 1 250 kr, a second is added if nothing has arrived three months after the deadline, and a third at five months, up to 3 750 kr in all.

What we do not know yet

The dates in this article are the 2026 season, for income year 2025. Skatteverket publishes each season's calendar on its Datum för deklarationen page, and the 2027 dates were not out when this was checked on 31 August 2026. Expect the same shape, not the same days.

The exact grundavdrag also depends on the prisbasbelopp set for each year, so the kronor figure moves even when the rule does not. Read the current number on Skatteverket's grundavdrag page rather than reusing one from a forum post.

One thing is worth saying plainly: for a person with one Swedish employer, no property and no foreign income, this is a ten-minute job. The complexity in this article belongs to everyone else.