New country code XX covers cases where the country is unknown

Employers who complete the individual-level arbetsgivardeklaration and kontrolluppgifter must state countries in code form whenever the form asks for the income recipient's citizenship, country of work or foreign tax registration number. The codes to use are Skatteverket's Landskoder list, which follows ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 and covers every country from Afghanistan (AF) to Östtimor (TL), with cross-references for alternative names such as Burma, Holland, Swaziland and Vitryssland pointing to Myanmar, Nederländerna, Eswatini and Belarus. A separate Övrig landskod section at the end of the list carries Kosovo (XK)Skatteverket, and it now carries a second row: Okänt land with code XX, for cases where the country is unknownSkatteverket.

The new row sits in the Övrig landskod section of the same list, which previously carried only Kosovo (XK)Skatteverket. The list is used across employer reporting, including control statements for foreign persons and foreign citizens. The duty to report a foreign tax registration number also covers control statements for persons with unlimited tax liability in Sweden who are resident in another state, and the number matters because it is the identification number used in contact with the tax administration of the state where the person lives or is resident. Tax registration numbers look different in different countries, and Skatteverket points to overviews of how each EU member state's number is structured as well as a database for checking a stated number against the algorithm of the country concerned. Where the employee is a foreign citizen, citizenship, country of work or the foreign tax registration number is entered on the control statement or the employer declaration using these country codes — and where the country itself is not known, XX is now the permitted valueSkatteverket.

The change is an addition only: no existing code was alteredSkatteverket and no rule text was rewordedSkatteverket. Employers reporting payments to and from abroad continue to use forms KU80 or KU81 together with the currency-code table for the currency field. The addition simply closes a gap for filings where the country field would otherwise have no valid entry, by providing a permitted value for unknown country alongside the named countries in the listSkatteverket.

The legal basis is Skatteverket's prescribed country-code table for the individual employer declaration and control statements, whose codes follow ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 with the supplementary Övrig landskod section carrying Kosovo (XK) and Okänt land (XX).