Occupational pension through your Swedish AB

You have paid yourself SEK 50,000 a month all year, the company has done well, and there is cash in the business account that you do not need privately right now. More salary costs 31.42 percent in employer contributions, and at SEK 643,000 in annual income you also start paying state income tax, according to Skatteverket’s amounts for 2026. Tjänstepension, an occupational pension paid by the company, is often the better answer. October is the right month to do the maths, because in practice the premium has to be paid before the financial year ends.

How much the company can deduct

The main rule is simple. For each employee, the company may deduct pension costs of at most 35 percent of salary, and never more than 10 price base amounts. You count as an employee of your own company, so the rule applies to you exactly as it would to a salesperson you had hired.

The prisbasbelopp, the price base amount the government sets each year, is SEK 59,200 for 2026. That puts the cap at SEK 592,000 for financial years ending in 2026. You only hit that cap with a salary of about SEK 1.7 million, so for most owners the 35 percent is the real limit.

You may choose freely between this year’s salary and the previous year’s as the base. That is more generous than it sounds. If you lowered your salary this year, use last year’s, and if you raised it, use this year’s. If you took no salary at all in either year, the room is zero.

Keep in mind that the 35 percent has to cover everything: retirement pension, disability pension and survivor’s pension. If your pension plan includes sickness cover or survivor protection, those premiums use up the same room.

Run the numbers on your own salary

Say you took SEK 600,000 in salary in 2025 and do the same in 2026. The room is 35 percent of 600,000, which is SEK 210,000. The company already pays SEK 5,000 a month into your occupational pension, SEK 60,000 over the full year.

That leaves SEK 150,000 the company can pay in as a one-off premium before New Year and deduct in full. If you pay in 200,000 instead, the extra SEK 50,000 is not deductible this year.

Special payroll tax instead of employer contributions

On pension costs the company pays särskild löneskatt, a special payroll tax, of 24.26 percent. On the full year’s premiums in the example, SEK 210,000, that comes to SEK 50,946. The same amount paid as salary would have cost SEK 65,982 in employer contributions. The difference is SEK 15,036, and that is before you count the income tax that is postponed until the day you draw the pension.

The special payroll tax is not reported in the monthly arbetsgivardeklaration, the employer return. You enter the tax base on the first page of Inkomstdeklaration 2, the company’s income tax return, and the tax is charged on the final tax statement along with corporate tax. You enter the base, 210,000, not the tax itself. The box has long been numbered 1.4, but check the number against this year’s form.

So a large one-off premium in December means a larger final tax bill the year after. Make sure the money for the payroll tax is still in the account.

How to book the premium and the tax

When the one-off premium leaves the business account, debit SEK 150,000 to account 7412, premiums for individual pension insurance, and credit the same amount to 1930. Book the monthly premiums the same way each month.

You can book the payroll tax as you go or at year-end. On the one-off premium it is SEK 36,390: debit 7533, special payroll tax on pension costs, and credit 2514, calculated special payroll tax on pension costs. Skatteverket describes the same thing, the tax is expensed in the year it belongs to and recorded as a liability. You clear the liability on 2514 when the tax is drawn from the company’s tax account.

At year-end, check that the balance on 2514 is exactly 24.26 percent of the year’s premiums. If it is not, a premium has ended up on the wrong account, often among ordinary insurance costs.

Pay before the balance sheet date

The basic rule is that the deduction belongs to the year the premium is paid. There is an exception for premiums the company has committed to and accrued in the year-end accounts and then pays no later than when the tax return is due, described in an archived Skatteverket position statement. It is old, and it requires that the commitment really existed before year-end. Do not build your planning on it. Pay well before 31 December, since insurers often have their own cut-off dates in the middle of the month.

What the pension does not give you

Pension premiums are not salary. They give you no sjukpenninggrundande inkomst, the income that sickness and parental benefits are based on, no state pension, and they do not raise next year’s 35 percent room. The highest pensionable income for 2026 is SEK 625,500, so do not cut your salary far below that level to make room for more pension.

Two more things. A kapitalförsäkring, an endowment insurance owned by the company, is not an occupational pension for tax purposes, and the company only gets the deduction when the pension is paid out. And the kompletteringsregeln, the supplementary rule that can allow more than 35 percent, only applies on early retirement or when earlier pension promises are insufficiently funded. It is calculated from tables and is not something to attempt on your own one evening in December.

Get out your payslips for 2025 and 2026, multiply the higher annual salary by 0.35 and subtract the premiums already paid this year. Then call the insurer and ask for the last date a one-off premium must arrive to be booked in 2026.