This goes out to my non-Swedish friends, it’s a quick runthrough of the tax levels in Sweden. Please read and ponder.

Taxes come in many guises, but in the end it’s the same - money payed by the residents to the state and/or nation where they reside. They can be direct, like income tax, or indirect - e.g sales tax and various “fees”. Let’s look at what a typical, Swedish wage earner pays...

Even before a single krona lands on the payslip and is subject to income taxes, there are other taxes: the employer pays an “arbetsgivaravgift” (”employer’s fee”) of 31.42 percent. This means that for any employee to recieve one hundred kronor, the cost for the employer is 131 kronor and 42 öre. Thus, 31.42/131.42 = 23.91 percent have already been deducted and only 76.09 kronor per 100 remain.

Now comes the income tax. Or rather, now come the income taxes... Swedish income taxes are divided into two main groups:

1) Municipal tax, which is payed on all income, and
2) Federal tax, which is added past certain levels of income

The first is actually comprised of four different taxes and “fees”:

a) The tax to the actual municipality, and
b) The tax to the “landsting”, which in lack of an international equivalent is best described as a county-wide governmental body responsible for most health care, some infrastructure and similar, and
c) Church tax, and

d) Burial fee

They’re all percentages of the income - a) and b) vary depending on where you live, but I’ll use my hometown/municipality; Umeå, Västerbotten county; as the example: it’s neither top nor bottom as far as tax levels go, just another Swedish city...

In Umeå the municipal tax varies from 35.41 to 35.61 percent depending on which part of the municipality you live in - I will use 35.5 percent as a reasonable average.

76.09 - 35.5 percent = 49.08 kronor per 100 earned.

Thus, I pay 51( fifty-one!) percent - as a MINIMUM!
Let that sink in for a while...

But I did a few hours of overtime last month, which lands me in the first federal tax bracket and another 20 percent is added on top of the 35.5, which means that I recieve 76.09 - 55.5 percent = 33.86 kronor per 100 earned,

I have thus payed 66.14 percent in taxes for that overtime. Yes, you read that right. Yup. Yuuuup...I said YES, you read that right!

But, by now the tax collectors are getting warmed up. Have you heard of this little thing called sales tax? Swedish Skatteverket sure has! They slap it on ev-e-ry-thing: milk, shirts, TP, cars, golf balls, what-have-you... Even on top of other taxes, in many cases.

Anyhow, with a bit more disposable income I decided to treat myself and went dancing. The entrance fee, like most things and services, carries a 25 percent “moms” and thus another 20 percent (1/1.25) of my earnings go straight to the black hole known as federal expenses.

I’ll sum it up: for every 100 kronor I have earned, I can buy services - or things - to the value of 27.09 kronor (100 minus 23.91 percent, minus 55.5 percent, minus 20 percent). This equals total taxes of 72.91 percent.
Seventy-two point nine one.

But hey - we be Vikings. We ain’t done yet.

There are LOTS of other taxes: energy tax, import tax, housing tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax, vehicle tax, road tax, waste tax, fertilizer tax, gambling tax, carbon dioxide tax, nuclear tax, sulphur tax... The list goes on and on and on. We even have a tax on “natural gravel” - no kidding.

And yeah, we have taxes on taxes, and taxes on those. And sales tax on top of THAT sum.

When I drove home from my West Coast Swinging, I had to fill the car up. With a 500 kronor bill and a price of 16.56 kronor per liter, that equalled 30.19 liters of fuel.
Now, this is a perfect example of the sales tax on tax on tax on tax scenario I described in the last paragraph. I won’t bore you with the details, but of those 16.56 kronor only 3.95 is the actual price for a liter of fuel - the rest is taxes. Thus, my 500 kronor bought me 30.19 x 3.95 = 119.26 kronor worth of fuel.

But hey - remember that I’d already payed all those taxes to have that money in the first place? Let’s calculate backwards... My 500 kronor equals total earnings of 1476 kronor and 67 öre. Geez, Louise - that means that the total taxes payed are 1476.67 minus 119.26 kronor. That’s equal to... Hell no, this can’t be right - I’ll crunch the numbers again... What the..?

That means that I have payed 92 percent in taxes. Ninety-two. 8 kronor out of 100 is what remains.

These figures are 100 percent correct, feel free to do your own calculations. And Vellkamm to Sveeden.

//Mats Dickson

P.S
If I had been one of those evil people who work hard and therefore receive more money from their employers, I would've landed in the second federal tax bracket and been forced to pay an extra 25 percent instead of "just" 20...
D.S

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