The Quip: You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. If you just moved to Sweden, make sure you apply for foreign tax relief, even if you don’t think you’ll get it. You lose nothing besides a little bit of time.

Sweden provides the opportunity for foreigners working in Sweden to exempt 25% of their income from taxes. At a 50% marginal tax rate, that saves you 12.5% of your gross salary. And at a 35% effective tax rate, that’s almost a 20% increase in your monthly take home income. Nice!

Tax relief for me?

When I was first moving to Sweden and was negotiating my employment contract, I specifically asked my hiring manager if they could help me apply for it. He came back to me with, “I asked the lawyers and they said you don’t qualify.”

The hurdle

At first, I could see why they said that. There are two paths to qualifying:

1. Income: 88,801 + SEK/month as of 2026. Well unfortunately I’m not one of the few people making that much!
2. Being an ‘"expert", "researcher" or "other key person", in the eyes of the law, with their examples being an executive, someone doing cutting edge research (probably having a PhD helps), or someone with extremely specialized knowledge. The first two examples didn't apply to me, and it would be an uphill battle to argue the third.

Still, why not?

Well two of my core philosophies are:

1. Control your own destiny
2. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take

You don’t need your employer to do anything when applying. And though there’s an option to apply through a representative, similar to what I’ve found with Migrationsverket, it’s totally acceptable to apply yourself.

So, making sure to apply within 3 months of working in Sweden, I submitted an application myself via email. I received a confirmation email within days. Then… silence.

The best Christmas present

They said it would take 6-7 weeks to hear back. I didn’t. I figured this meant I would be rejected.

Shortly before Christmas, I got a letter in the mail. I was approved!