Capital gains tax on a home sale in Sweden 2026: what you pay when you sell

When you sell your home at a gain, you pay 22 percent tax on the gain. If you buy a new home, you can postpone the tax through uppskov (deferral), which has been interest-free since 2021. If you are about to buy your next home, this matters: the deferral frees up money that would otherwise go to tax, and that money can become your down payment.

How to calculate the gain

The gain is not the whole sale sum, but what you actually made. You work it out like this:

Sale price, minus selling costs such as the agent fee, minus what you once paid for the home, minus your improvement costs.

What is left is your gain, and that is what you are taxed on. If you sell at a loss instead, you may deduct half the loss in your tax return.

What counts as an improvement cost

Improvement costs lower the gain, so they are worth keeping track of. Skatteverket splits them into two tracks.

Type	What it is	Deduction
Basic improvement	New build, extension or rebuild, or something entirely new	The full cost, no time limit
Improving repair	Maintenance that left the home better than at purchase	Only if done in the sale year or the five preceding years

Ordinary maintenance such as repainting to the same standard does not count. If you switched to a more expensive material, only the extra cost counts as a basic improvement. And the costs must total at least 5,000 kr in the same year to be deductible that year. So keep receipts from renovations; they become money when you sell.

The tax in kronor

Technically 22/30 of the gain is taxed in the capital income category at 30 percent. That lands at 22 percent of the whole gain.

Worked example: a gain of 150,000 kr gives a taxable part of 110,000 kr, and the tax is 33,000 kr. If you have made deductible improvements of 100,000 kr over the years, the gain drops to 50,000 kr and the tax to 11,000 kr. The receipts matter.

Uppskov: postpone the tax interest-free

If you sell your permanent home and buy a new home within the EEA, you can claim uppskov, postponing the tax on the gain. Since 1 January 2021 the deferral is interest-free. The old annual notional income of about 0.5 percent is gone, so it costs nothing to let the tax wait.

Some conditions apply:

• The deferred amount must be at least 50,000 kr per owner
• The cap is 3,000,000 kr per home, split by ownership share
• The original home must have been your permanent residence; you must have lived there for at least one year before the sale or at least three of the last five years
• You must have bought the new home no earlier than 1 January the year before and no later than 31 December the year after the sale
• You must have moved in by 2 May the second year after the year of sale

If you sold at a gain in 2020 or later and paid the tax, you can claim the deferral retroactively through a review and get the tax back to postpone it for free instead.

What it means for you as a buyer

Most people who buy a new home also sell their old one. Then the deferral is not just a tax matter but a liquidity matter. Instead of putting the gain towards tax straight away, you can carry it to the next purchase and use it as the down payment. Because the deferral is interest-free, it costs you nothing to wait, and you keep more capital in the home where it works for you.

So do the maths on your next home with and without the deferral. The difference can be exactly the down payment you need to get where you want.

Checklist when you sell

• Work out the gain: price minus agent fee minus purchase price minus improvements
• Find the receipts for basic improvements and improving repairs
• Set aside 22 percent of the gain for tax if you do not claim deferral
• If you buy new within the EEA: claim the deferral and keep the gain for the down payment
• Sold at a gain in 2020 or later without deferral: consider a review, it is free now