Skatteverket retires staff-supplies VAT statement from guidance

Skatteverket has removed the citation to its position statement "Beskattningsbara transaktioner till anställda, mervärdesskatt" from the guidance page on the meaning of a taxable personSkatteverket. The operative sentence is unchanged — a taxable person carries on a single economic activity comprising all taxable transactions they perform — but the supporting reference is goneSkatteverket, with a note dated 6 October 2026 explaining that the citation was dropped because the position statement no longer applies. The entry in the page's list of position statements now reads that it is no longer to be appliedSkatteverket.

The retired statement, dated 1 April 2025, set out Skatteverket's two-step test for when taxable supplies to employees of a different kind than those normally forming part of the economic activity belong to that activity: whether the additional transactions occur with such continuity and frequency that they could themselves constitute an economic activity, and if not, whether they are otherwise so connected with the economic activity that they form part of it. It also stated that where employer and employee transact below market value, the taxable amount is recalculated by reference to market value unless the employer shows the consideration is commercially justified.

The successor statement of 16 June 2026 withdraws the 2025 statementSkatteverket because the Supreme Administrative Court clarified the law in its judgment of 25 February 2026 in cases 4652–25Skatteverket. On revaluation, the court develops above all when consideration may be commercially justified: it may be so even where it is below the company's cost, for example a special benefit aimed at staff that is a normal feature of a company's operations, where the price reduction is commercially motivated and benefits the business conducted. The information from the judgment now appears directly on various guidance pages, so there is no longer reason to keep the position statement.

The judgment's clarification matters for employers supplying goods or services to staff against consideration, including salary deductions: such supplies may form part of the economic activity and escape market-value revaluation where the staff discount is a normal, commercially motivated feature of the businessSkatteverket. The retired statement did not cover benefits provided free of charge, nor supplies of company cars and their running costs, which are handled separately in the VAT Act.

Legal basis: Skatteverket's statement of 16 June 2026 (dnr 8-196118-2026) withdrawing the statement of 1 April 2025 (dnr 8-113713-2025), applying the Supreme Administrative Court's judgment of 25 February 2026 in cases 4652–25Skatteverket; the VAT Act (mervärdesskattelagen 2023:200) and article 9 of the VAT Directive (2006/112/EC).