Coupon-tax filing goes digital as Skatteverket gains order powers

Companies that are not CSD-registered (kupongbolag) and pay dividends to shareholders resident abroad would gain an optional electronic filing channel for coupon-tax dataSkatteverket under government bill 2025/26:309, submitted to parliament on 27 August 2026. Coupon tax (kupongskatt) is the withholding tax due when a Swedish company distributes dividends to a person resident or domiciled abroad. The bill proposes that a kupongbolag may forward to Skatteverket, electronically on a form the agency prescribes, the dividend data it has received on paper forms from the recipients — instead of sending the paper forms themselvesSkatteverket. Companies that prefer paper could continue filing on paper.Skatteverket The changes would enter into force on 1 January 2027, with no transitional provisions.Skatteverket

The filing deadline is unchanged: data must reach Skatteverket no later than four months after the distribution date, and no later than 15 January of the following year. A kupongbolag that has distributed dividends must always file, even where no coupon tax is payable. The aggregate amount of dividends from which coupon tax was withheld must still be stated separately — the rule moves from section 17 to section 15 of kupongskattelagen (1970:624) — while the paper-era requirements disappear: no more stating the home municipality (hemortskommun), no sorting of forms by municipality, and no separation of forms on which tax was withheld from other forms. Section 17 is repealed.

The bill's second half gives Skatteverket new compulsory-order toolsSkatteverket modelled on chapter 37, sections 6 and 9 of skatteförfarandelagen. The agency could order anyone who is or may be obliged to file coupon-tax data to supply what is needed to verify that dutySkatteverket, and could issue third-party orders (tredjemansföreläggande) against anyone who is or may be bookkeeping-obliged under bokföringslagen or is another legal person than an estate of a deceased personSkatteverket, requiring data on a legal transaction with someone else that matters for verifying another party's filing duty. In practice that reaches banks and payment intermediaries whose account and payment data let Skatteverket trace dividend flows through intermediaries and nominee arrangements. An order could be combined with a conditional fine (vite), immediately enforceable, except where the addressee is suspected of a punishable act connected with the inquiry; an order without a fine could not be appealed, and fine-imposition disputes would go to the administrative court hearing kupongskatt appeals.

The backdrop is large-scale coupon-tax fraud of the cum-ex and cum-cum type, which the bill notes cost EU member states 140 billion euro, and Skatteverket's finding that kupongbolag in particular fail their filing duties while arrangements route untaxed funds abroad through Swedish companies. Today the agency's only control tool under coupon-tax law is ordering an audit — a heavier intrusion than a targeted order — and chapter 37 of skatteförfarandelagen does not apply to coupon tax. Bank and business groups objected that the third-party order is vague and intrusive; the government answers that a narrow named-person design would defeat the purpose, since Skatteverket often learns who received a dividend only by ordering the intermediary bank, and that proportionality review under förvaltningslagen applies to every order. About 1,800 companies filed coupon-tax data in 2025; the agency spends just over four full-time equivalents, around four million kronor a year, handling paper forms, and estimates one million kronor once to build the e-service. Legal basis is the proposed amendments to kupongskattelagen (1970:624) in prop. 2025/26:309, entering into force 1 January 2027.