Paying your own wellness allowance from your Swedish AB

Your gym membership runs out in November and you are standing at the front desk with two cards in your wallet, your own and the company’s. Can the company pay? Yes, as long as you are employed by your own aktiebolag (limited company) and stay within the limits.

This is one of the few areas where a limited company clearly beats an enskild firma (sole proprietorship). In a written answer in the Riksdag, the finance minister put it this way: in a limited company the owner counts as an employee and can have wellness paid tax-free by the company. A sole trader is not an employee and gets nothing.

The limit is SEK 5,000, and it is a cliff

The company may pay out at most SEK 5,000 per year as friskvårdsbidrag, the wellness allowance, to an employee. Within that amount it is tax-free for you, and the company withholds no tax and pays no employer contributions on it.

What many people miss is what happens one krona above. Skatteverket, the Swedish Tax Agency, says that if the amount is exceeded the employee is taxed on the entire allowance. The whole sum, from the first krona.

Take an annual membership that costs SEK 5,400. If the company reimburses the full receipt, all SEK 5,400 becomes a taxable benefit. The company pays arbetsgivaravgifter (employer contributions) of 31.42 percent, which is SEK 1,697, and you pay income tax on SEK 5,400 on top of that.

If the company reimburses SEK 5,000 instead and you cover the remaining SEK 400 yourself, the tax is zero. Do that. Never let the payouts in a calendar year go past SEK 5,000, whatever the receipt says.

What the money can be spent on

The allowance has to go to exercise or other wellness activities. Gym memberships, swimming, riding lessons and courses that involve physical activity are the standard examples, and according to Skatteverket it also covers massage, acupuncture, dietary advice, help to quit smoking and online training programmes.

Activities without any exercise in them, massage for example, have an extra cap. They may cost at most SEK 1,000 per session. Exercise activities are allowed to cost more than that per occasion.

Equipment is out, whether bought or rented, and so are personal membership fees in clubs and associations. Running shoes, a bike and a heart rate watch do not qualify. Healthcare, medical care and beauty treatments do not count as wellness either.

Gift cards are a December classic and they do not work. Skatteverket said so again in December 2025: if the company reimburses a gift card, that is salary and not a tax-free benefit.

If you have staff, everyone gets the same terms

A personalvårdsförmån, a staff welfare benefit, must be offered to the whole staff. If you are alone in the company, you are the whole staff and that settles it.

If you have one more employee, that person must be offered the same amount on the same terms. You cannot give yourself SEK 5,000 and your employee SEK 2,000. For part-time employees, Skatteverket accepts scaling the amount to working hours.

The allowance also must not be exchangeable for cash. Do not transfer SEK 5,000 to your private account in advance and go looking for receipts later. The money has to follow an actual receipt.

The receipt is your entire evidence

The simplest setup is that you pay privately and the company reimburses you against a receipt. The receipt does not need your personal identity number on it, but it must show which activity it is for. Skatteverket puts the responsibility on the employer to show that the conditions are met, and the employer is you.

A card slip showing only an amount and a business name is therefore not enough. Ask for a receipt that says “annual gym membership” or “10 swim sessions”, and keep it as the supporting document for the payout.

How to book it

When the company pays the reimbursement, book the cost as a staff expense and credit the bank account. In the BAS chart of accounts this usually lands on 7699 Övriga personalkostnader (other staff costs), but check the chart of accounts you actually use. The account number is convention, not law.

Since the tax-free allowance is neither salary nor a taxable benefit, it does not go in with the salary figures when you report tax and contributions. If you end up above the limit it is the opposite, and the whole amount has to be reported as a benefit that month.

VAT is the point where I cannot give you a firm answer. I have not found a current statement from Skatteverket on deducting input VAT on wellness that the employee paid privately and was reimbursed for. The SEK 5,000 ceiling does include VAT in any case. My advice is to book the full amount as a cost without deducting VAT, and to ask Skatteverket if you want to do it differently.

What is left this year disappears at New Year

The allowance is per year and cannot be saved. Whatever you have not used by 31 December is gone, and you cannot take SEK 10,000 next year to make up for it.

You are allowed to buy an annual membership or a punch card late in the year, though. A card bought in one year that runs across the year-end counts toward the year you buy it. An annual membership paid in December 2026 and used during 2027 therefore fits within the 2026 allowance.

Check your books for how much the company has already paid out to you this year. If there is room left, buy the membership, ask for a receipt that names the activity and have the company reimburse you before year-end. If the card costs more than what remains up to SEK 5,000, pay the difference yourself.