Increased price base amount raises threshold for Swedish expert tax

From next year, higher monthly salaries will be required to qualify for the Swedish expert tax based on the salary level criterium. This is due to an increase of the central price base amount.

The Swedish government has approved an 8.7 per cent increase of the price base amount of SEK 4,200 to a total of SEK 52,500 for 2023. Due to the current inflation, this is a higher yearly increase than usual.

Several social security and tax rules are directly or indirectly tied to the price base amount. Among those are the Swedish expert tax rules for foreign citizens who are employed by Swedish companies (or a foreign company with a permanent establishment in Sweden). To qualify for expert tax status, based on the salary level, the foreign citizen will, from next year, need to have a monthly gross salary of at least SEK 105,001. This is due to the tax rules requiring that the monthly salary exceeds two price base amounts.

It will still be possible to apply for expert tax based on the employee’s skills and / or role as no minimum salary level applies to these criteria.

The expert tax rules are applied based on decisions from the Taxation of Research Workers Board (Sw. Forskarskattenämnden). The board’s decisions are valid for five years. The change of the price base amount will not impact any decisions issued based on the price base amount applicable in years before 2023.

In recent years, the yearly adjustments of the price base amount have been modest. But due to inflation a substantial increase is made for the coming year.

As mentioned above, the price base amount adjustment directly impacts the compensation-based criteria for qualifying for expert tax. People moving to Sweden in 2023, will need to have a monthly salary of at least SEK 105,001 to be granted the tax relief based on the salary level. Currently, the corresponding amount is SEK 96,601.

Companies who are planning relocations to Sweden in 2023, where the employee’s salary level is in this band (SEK 96,601 – SEK 105,001), may wish to assess if it is possible to advance the relocation to late 2022 in order to apply for the expert tax based on this year’s price base amount.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to discuss.

Read more
The article in Swedish

Subscribe to TaxNews och other news from KPMG Sweden.