The Swedish EOR onboarding sequence, step by step from quote to exit

The quote turns a role description into an annual cost, so it needs the salary, the start date, the place of work and the type of job before anything else happens. At Employer of Record Sweden, pricing is done by us, as the employer of record that will later employ your hire: statute-driven costs go down first, agreement-driven costs second.

Statutory items are predictable. The 2026 arbetsgivaravgifter (employer social contributions) load 31.42% onto gross pay. Only two groups are cheaper: people born between 2003 and 2007, charged 20.81% on the first SEK 25,000 of each month’s salary, and those already 67, charged 10.21%. Semesterlagen then adds a semestertillägg (holiday supplement) for every paid day of leave, set at 0.43% of the monthly salary.

The agreement-driven items need a question answered: will a kollektivavtal (collective agreement) apply to this role? If so, look for a pension line; for white-collar roles it is normally ITP1, charged at 4.5% on salary up to a monthly SEK 52,125, with särskild löneskatt (the pension-cost tax) of 24.26% layered on the premium. The monthly EOR fee is quoted separately at USD 560 per employee, roughly SEK 5,550 using ECB rates from 24 September 2026.

The municipality where the employee lives affects the tax withheld from their pay, but it does not change what the employer pays, so a quote for Stockholm and one for Umeå differ only on the employee’s net figure.

To keep the quote accurate, send the employer of record a short brief rather than a job advert. The details that change the numbers are the gross monthly salary, any fixed allowances or car benefit, the employee’s year of birth (because of the reduced contribution rates), whether the role is white-collar or blue-collar, and the date you want payroll to begin. Taxable benefits attract the same 31.42% contributions as cash pay, so a company car or a housing allowance belongs in the quote from the start.

You agree the offer with the candidate, and the employer of record issues the anställningsavtal (employment contract) in its own name as employer. Keeping the two aligned matters: salary, title, working hours, start date and any probation period in the offer should appear unchanged in the contract.

The default under lagen om anställningsskydd (LAS) is tillsvidareanställning (permanent employment). A provanställning (probation period) of up to 6 months is common, and either party may end it early; if neither does, the job becomes permanent. Fixed-term work is confined to a handful of statutory forms; the most flexible, särskild visstidsanställning, becomes permanent once it has lasted over a year in any five-year window.

A one-week clock starts on the first working day. By its end, LAS § 6 c expects the employee to hold written details of:

• the parties and the place of work
• job title or description and the form of employment
• starting pay, pay intervals and normal working hours
• holiday entitlement and notice periods
• which kollektivavtal governs the job, where one does

Remaining information can follow within one month. Contracts usually also cover confidentiality, intellectual property and, for some roles, a non-compete clause. Avtalslagen § 38 limits a non-compete to what is reasonable, and a sweeping restriction on a junior hire is therefore a weak protection.

Working hours also belong in the contract. Arbetstidslagen sets a forty-hour ordinary week, a yearly ceiling of 200 general overtime hours and an unbroken 11-hour rest in every 24. Agreements may shift some of those limits. Senior people who organise their own time sit outside the Act altogether, so their contracts commonly state that salary already reflects extra hours.

Your hire relies on registrations the employer of record already holds, so your company does not register with Skatteverket as an employer. A business that employs staff in Sweden submits the Skatte- och avgiftsanmälan (form SKV 4620) to register for F-skatt (business tax status), VAT where relevant, and as an employer. The employer of record has completed that process, and it holds the organisationsnummer that payroll, pension and permit filings refer to.

For the employee, the result is ordinary A-skatt (employee tax status) treatment. Preliminary tax is deducted each month using Skatteverket’s skattetabeller, based on the municipality they are registered in, and the individual files an inkomstdeklaration each spring to settle the final amount.

A work permit applicant is the one case where registrations become visible to you. Migrationsverket’s employer e-service is used with the employer’s Swedish organisationsnummer, which in an EOR arrangement belongs to the employer of record, and the EOR confirms the offer in that system.

In the first month, the employer of record pays the salary, deducts tax, pays contributions and files the AGI return. The arbetsgivardeklaration på individnivå (AGI) reports each employee’s pay and deductions separately, and Skatteverket uses it in place of an annual employer statement for the individual.

A worked example helps. For a SEK 50,000 monthly salary and an employee living in Stockholm, not a Church of Sweden member, aged under 66, tax table 31, column 1, withholds SEK 11,000, so the payslip shows SEK 39,000 net. Employer contributions on the same salary are SEK 15,710 for the month at 31.42%.

Timing follows Skatteverket’s AGI calendar. An employer with turnover of SEK 40 million or less has until the 12th of the next month to file and pay, or the 17th when that month is January or August. A zero return is expected in a month with no pay, and a late return triggers a SEK 625 förseningsavgift (late-filing fee).

From your side, the month closes with an invoice showing gross salary, contributions, any pension and the fee, together with the payslip data behind it. Checking the first invoice line by line against the quote is the fastest way to catch a wrong start date or a missing allowance.

The monthly deduction is only an estimate of final tax. In the Stockholm example, SEK 132,000 is withheld over a full year while the final assessment comes to SEK 128,646, which points to roughly SEK 3,354 coming back to the employee once the return is processed. Employees sometimes ask the employer about this difference, and the answer is that tax tables round, and Skatteverket settles the exact figure each spring.

Ongoing work is mostly calendar-driven: holiday, sickness, parental leave and pay changes each have their own reporting rules. The employer of record keeps these running, while you approve leave and tell the EOR about salary changes before the payroll cut-off.

Semesterlagen grants 25 days of leave, counted over a holiday year from April to the end of March unless the parties choose otherwise. Anything beyond 20 days a year can be carried forward, with a five-year limit on using it.

Sickness has a fixed sequence. For the opening fortnight the employer covers sjuklön (sick pay) at four-fifths of salary, once the karensavdrag has been subtracted, a waiting-period deduction worth 20% of what a normal week of sick pay would amount to. From the eighth day of absence the employee must produce a medical certificate. If the illness continues, the case is reported to Försäkringskassan on day 15 and state sickness benefit takes over.

Parental leave needs 2 months’ notice from the employee, and the parental benefit itself comes from Försäkringskassan. Where ITP1 applies, the premium is a percentage of salary, so a pay rise lifts the premium and, with it, the pension-cost tax charged at 24.26%.

An exit follows LAS in the same way as any Swedish employment, and the employer of record issues the notice as employer. Dismissal needs sakliga skäl (objective grounds), meaning either arbetsbrist (redundancy) or reasons linked to the person. The employee can resign with 1 month’s notice.

An exit during provanställning is simpler. Either side may end a probation period before it runs out under LAS § 6, and the employer of record, as employer, communicates that decision to the employee in the correct form. If you have doubts about a new hire, raise them well before the six-month point, because the job becomes permanent automatically once probation expires.

The employer’s notice period depends on length of service:

• under 2 years: 1 month
• 2 years or more: 2 months, and 3 months from 4 years
• 6 years or more: 4 months, and 5 months from 8 years
• a decade or longer: 6 months

Before any redundancy, MBL §§ 11 to 13 require talks with the unions concerned, and that includes a union whose members work there when no agreement has been signed. The selection order still runs by tenure, but since October 2022 an employer can shield 3 people from it, and anyone let go keeps a re-employment priority for 9 months.

The final payroll includes semesterersättning (pay in lieu) for untaken holiday and is reported on the next AGI return. The employee’s clock starts too, with a fortnight to contest the notice and four months to lodge a damages claim, and under the reformed LAS a pending challenge no longer extends the employment beyond the notice date.

A non-EU hire adds a work permit phase between offer and start date. Migrationsverket wants to see the vacancy listed on Platsbanken or EURES for a minimum of ten days, the contract to be signed before the application, and the relevant union to be given a chance to comment.

Pay is tested against a salary floor tied to the national median: 90% of it from June 2026, or SEK 34,470 a month, dropping to SEK 28,725 for the groups Migrationsverket exempts. Insurance cover for health, life, work injury and pension is expected too, and because staffing is a named higher-scrutiny sector, the employer of record has to evidence three months of secured wages. A start that slips past four months after the decision must be reported.

For the full hiring picture, from advert to first day, see recruiting staff in Sweden: first steps. If the role and parties are still being settled, the split of responsibilities is laid out in Swedish employer of record basics, and our EOR services page sets out each task we take on.