Government proposes cross-border VAT overhaul from 1 January 2027

The government has asked parliament to rewrite parts of the VAT Act for cross-border tradeSkatteverket from 1 January 2027Skatteverket. Proposition 2025/26:278Skatteverket, submitted to the Riksdag on 4 June 2026Skatteverket, implements the second step of the EU's VAT in the Digital Age package in the mervärdesskattelagen (2023:200)Skatteverket, with older provisions continuing to govern any transaction whose chargeable event occurred before the switch.

The backdrop is the ViDA amending directive, presented by the Commission in December 2022 and reaching national law in five steps. Step one has applied since 14 April 2025 with no Swedish legislation needed. Step two must be in place by 31 December 2026Skatteverket and applied from 1 January 2027Skatteverket; this bill carries itSkatteverket. Steps three to five — the package's main changes — apply from July 2028, July 2029 and July 2030 and will return in future legislation.

For platforms, the deemed-supplier rule is extendedSkatteverket. A taxable person that enables supplies of goods within the EU through an electronic interface is already treated as having received and supplied the goods itself; the bill extends that treatment to supplies to taxable persons and to non-taxable legal persons whose intra-EU acquisitions are not taxedSkatteverket — a clarification matching Skatteverket's practice, with a matching accounting rule in a new 7 kap. 27 a § ML.

The 99,680-kronor threshold for intra-EU distance sales and certain servicesSkatteverket is narrowed: it will only cover sales where the goods are dispatched from SwedenSkatteverket, in 6 kap. 62 § ML. Registering for the EU scheme will by law count as opting out of the threshold ruleSkatteverket, through a new 6 kap. 64 a § ML — something businesses must watch where stock sits in several Member States, since the Swedish threshold and another country's equivalent can never apply at the same timeSkatteverket.

Accounting under the special schemes gets its own trackSkatteverket. New 22 kap. 32 a–32 c §§ ML set the chargeable event for transactions under the non-EU and EU schemesSkatteverket, while a new 22 kap. 32 d § ML sets the reporting-obligation timing for transactions under all three schemes including the import schemeSkatteverket, whose chargeable event is already regulated in 22 kap. 32 §. Some businesses may therefore report output tax in a different period than today. Just under 3,800 Swedish-established companies file Swedish VAT through the EU or import schemes — 3,450 in the EU scheme and 320 in the import scheme — and just under 900 of them use cash accounting, the group most likely to need different clocks for scheme and non-scheme sales.

The schemes' scope widens in two places. The non-EU scheme becomes available for services supplied within the EU to customers who are neither established, resident nor staying in the EUSkatteverket. The EU scheme becomes available for certain supplies of gas, electricity, heating and coolingSkatteverket, through a new 22 kap. 4 a § ML applying to supplies made up to 30 June 2028Skatteverket.

Non-EU-established scheme users get a clarified no: no input-VAT deduction on acquisitions and imports used for scheme businessSkatteverket, with refunds routed through directive 86/560/EEG for the non-established and the 2008/9 portal for the EU-established — a split the assessment says changes little in practice. The bill expects no public-finance effects and a roughly unchanged caseload at Skatteverket.

Consultation was broadly supportive, with flags attached: FAR urges the project to be presented as implementing the directive rather than codifying agency practice, and Regelrådet faults the impact assessment.

Legal basis: proposed amendments to the mervärdesskattelagen (2023:200) implementing step two of the ViDA amendments to the VAT DirectiveSkatteverket, Council Directive 2006/112/EC.