Sweden Enskild Firma (Sole Trader) Tax Calculator

Running an enskild firma (sole proprietorship) in Sweden means you are personally liable for two things a regular employee's employer normally handles: egenavgifter (the self-employed equivalent of payroll social contributions, funding pension, health insurance, and parental leave) and F-skatt, the preliminary tax you pay directly to Skatteverket in monthly installments rather than having an employer withhold it from a paycheck. Neither is optional, and both are calculated on your business profit, not your revenue.

Egenavgifter is where most first-time sole traders get surprised. At the full rate, it's 28.97% of your adjusted profit -- not a small line item, and structurally different from an employee's arbetsgivaravgifter (employer social contributions), which an employer pays on top of your gross salary and you never see directly. As a sole trader, egenavgifter comes straight out of your own bottom line, alongside ordinary kommunal and (above a threshold) statlig income tax on what's left. This calculator computes the full chain: egenavgifter, the special deduction that partially offsets it, the resulting taxable profit, and the income tax due on that -- so you can see your true net income from the business, not just the pre-tax profit figure your bookkeeping shows.

1. Egenavgifter rate selection. The full 28.97% rate applies to an active sole trader under 66. A reduced 10.21% rate applies from age 66. Sole traders born 1937 or earlier pay 0%. A passive business (one you don't actively work in, roughly less than a third of full-time) pays a different, lower särskild löneskatt (special payroll tax) rate of 24.26% instead of full egenavgifter, and does not qualify for the special deduction below.

1. Egenavgifter amount -- a self-consistent calculation. Egenavgifter is levied on your profit after deducting the egenavgifter itself, which makes the calculation circular. Solved algebraically:

$$\text{Egenavgifter} = \frac{\text{Rate} \times \text{Profit}}{1 + \text{Rate}}$$

1. Special deduction (schablonavdrag för egenavgifter). Active businesses can additionally deduct 7.5% of profit, capped at SEK 15,000/year, as a rough pre-payment against next year's egenavgifter liability.

$$\text{Special Deduction} = \min(\text{Profit} \times 7.5\%, \text{SEK } 15{,}000)$$

1. Net profit for income tax. Profit minus egenavgifter minus the special deduction.

1. Income tax. The resulting net profit is taxed exactly like ordinary earned income -- grundavdrag, kommunalskatt at your kommun's rate, jobbskatteavdrag, and statlig inkomstskatt above the 2026 threshold (see the Sweden Net Salary by Kommun Calculator for the full income-tax mechanics reused here).

1. Total cost and net income. Egenavgifter plus income tax, subtracted from gross profit.

$$\text{Net Income} = \text{Profit} - \text{Egenavgifter} - \text{Income Tax}$$

• Only 8 kommuner (Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Uppsala, Linköping, Örebro, Västerås, Helsingborg) are modeled for the income-tax portion; see the Sweden Net Salary by Kommun Calculator's own limitations for the kommunalskatt rate approximations.
• The exact statutory egenavgifter component breakdown (ålderspensionsavgift, sjukförsäkringsavgift, föräldraförsäkringsavgift, etc., which together sum to the headline rate) is not itemized -- only the combined rate is modeled.
• Sjukpenninggrundande inkomst (SGI) and its effect on sick pay/parental benefit levels is not modeled; egenavgifter funds these benefits, but the benefit calculation itself is a separate system.
• VAT (moms), employer's contributions on any employees you hire, and corporate-structure alternatives (aktiebolag) are entirely out of scope -- this calculator is specific to a sole proprietorship's own egenavgifter and income tax.
• Negative profit years, loss carryforwards, and the first-year startup deduction some new sole traders qualify for are not modeled.
• F-skatt is a suggested starting installment, not your actual assigned rate -- Skatteverket sets your real preliminary tax based on your own income estimate submitted at registration or via your tax return, and can differ materially from this calculator's simple annual-total-divided-by-12 approach.

• Budgeting only for income tax and forgetting egenavgifter. At the full rate, egenavgifter alone can exceed 20% of your gross profit before any income tax is even applied -- a common source of underpaid F-skatt and a surprise tax bill.
• Confusing egenavgifter with an employee's payroll deductions. An employee's payslip shows income tax withheld; the employer's contribution is invisible to them. A sole trader pays both roles' worth of contribution, just under a different name and a different (generally somewhat lower, since there's no employer margin) combined rate.
• Forgetting the special deduction only applies to active businesses. A passive enskild firma gets no schablonavdrag, one of several ways the passive/active distinction changes the math beyond just the headline rate.
• Not adjusting F-skatt when profit changes mid-year. If your business has a strong or weak year, update your preliminary tax registration with Skatteverket rather than letting a stale F-skatt rate under- or over-collect all year.
• Ignoring the age-66 rate change. Sole traders who keep working past 66 sometimes don't realize their contribution rate has dropped substantially, and continue budgeting at the old, higher rate.

• Skatteverket: "Egenavgifter" official guidance, including the 2026 full rate (28.97%), the reduced 66+ rate (10.21%), and the exemption for those born 1937 or earlier.
• Skatteverket: "Särskild löneskatt" official guidance for the passive-business rate (24.26%).
• Skatteverket: "Schablonavdrag för egenavgifter" official guidance, confirming the 7.5%/SEK 15,000 special deduction mechanics for active sole traders.
• Skatteverket: kommunalskatt, grundavdrag, jobbskatteavdrag, and statlig inkomstskatt sources as cited in the Sweden Net Salary by Kommun Calculator, reused unchanged for the income-tax portion of this calculation.