Investing from Sweden: ISK, KF and depot in 2026

• ISK: no tax on gains, dividends or interest from the account. Instead, 30% tax is due each year on a deemed income, the schablonintäkt. For 2026 it is 3.55% of the capital base, so the tax comes to an effective 1.065%.
• Allowance: since 1 January 2026 a capital base of SEK 300,000 is tax-free (2025: SEK 150,000). The amount covers ISK, KF and PEPP combined and is deducted automatically.
• KF: the insurer pays the yield tax (avkastningsskatt) and charges it to you; you report nothing for it in your tax return.
• Ordinary depot: 30% on a surplus of capital income. Sales of listed shares go on the K4 schedule; a loss that your gains do not cover counts at 70%.
• Protection: the investerarskydd pays up to SEK 250,000 if an institution goes bankrupt and cannot return your securities or money. The deposit guarantee covers up to SEK 1,150,000 per person and institution.

Inside an ISK, Skatteverket says, there is no tax on gains, dividends, interest or other returns from the account's assets, and none on withdrawals. Instead, a deemed income is taxed every year. It is built in three steps:

1. 1Capital base (kapitalunderlag): add up the account's value at the start of each quarter and all deposits made during the year, then divide by four. Transfers from another ISK of your own do not count as deposits.
2. 2Rate: the government borrowing rate (statslåneränta) on 30 November of the previous year plus one percentage point, but never less than 1.25%. On 30 November 2025 the statslåneränta stood at 2.55%, so the rate for 2026 is 3.55%. For 2025 it was 2.96% (1.96% plus one percentage point).
3. 3Tax: 30% on the deemed income. For 2026 that is 30% × 3.55% = 1.065% of the capital base; for 2025 it was 0.888%.

The skattefri grundnivå is deducted first: SEK 150,000 in 2025 and SEK 300,000 since 1 January 2026. Skatteverket applies it automatically as a deduction in the capital section of your tax return.

Worked example for 2026: at the start of each quarter there is SEK 480,000 in the ISK, and you pay in SEK 80,000 during the year. The capital base is (4 × 480,000 + 80,000) / 4 = SEK 500,000. After deducting SEK 300,000, SEK 200,000 remains; the tax is 1.065% of that, or SEK 2,130. If you also hold a KF or a PEPP product, all three share the one allowance.

As pure arithmetic, ignoring the allowance, losses and the timing of sales: the ISK tax equals 30% on a return of 3.55%. An ordinary depot would bear the same tax if a 3.55% return were realised and taxed there in the same year. Which costs less depends on returns, losses and holding period, which nobody knows in advance.

Other ISK rules

• No losses: losses inside an ISK are not deductible.
• One owner: an ISK belongs to exactly one person or one estate; there are no joint accounts.
• Eligible assets: cash, fund units, and securities admitted to a regulated market anywhere in the world. Securities on an MTF are eligible only if the trading takes place within the EEA.
• Moving holdings in: moving securities from an ordinary depot into an ISK counts as a disposal for tax purposes; the transfer is treated as a sale.
• Interest on cash: since income year 2025, interest on cash in an ISK is taxable if its rate at any point in the year exceeds the statslåneränta at the end of November of the previous year. Nordnet's Swedish price list shows a deposit rate of 0.00% on the ISK, the KF and the Aktie- och fondkonto.
• Foreign withholding tax: if tax paid abroad on dividends appears on a kontrolluppgift, Skatteverket calculates the credit automatically.

A KF is an endowment insurance policy; at Nordnet, according to the provider, you decide yourself how the money is invested. The tax here is called avkastningsskatt: the insurer pays it and, under the contract, collects the corresponding amount from you. If you hold a Swedish KF, you do not report any basis for the avkastningsskatt in your tax return.

Since 1 January 2025 the KF shares the allowance with the ISK and PEPP; if you have both, the deduction goes to the ISK first. If you live in Sweden and own a foreign KF, Skatteverket says you normally pay avkastningsskatt on it in Sweden. How that is reported we have not checked.

Outside the ISK and the KF, the general rules for capital income apply:

• Rate: a surplus of capital income is taxed at 30%. A deficit gives a tax reduction of 30% on up to SEK 100,000 of deficit and 21% on the part above that. A deficit of SEK 150,000 therefore gives 30% × 100,000 + 21% × 50,000 = SEK 40,500.
• Reporting: sales of listed shares go on the K4 schedule, section A, attached to your income tax return. The 2026 return covers sales made in 2025.
• Losses: Skatteverket shows, as an example, that gains on listed shares are netted against losses on listed equity funds sold in the same year; whatever the gains do not cover is deductible at 70% (kvotering). Skatteverket does the netting and the 70% calculation itself. Whether every securities gain can be netted fully against every loss, the page does not say.
• Holding period: the pages we retrieved mention no holding period after which gains would become tax-free.
• Reporting by the provider: banks and credit institutions normally send Skatteverket a kontrolluppgift when you sell shares. None of the sources we retrieved shows that foreign brokers do the same. If you trade through a foreign broker, check yourself that your K4 is complete.

• Supervision: Finansinspektionen (FI) supervises the companies in the financial sector.
• Investerarskydd: if an institution goes bankrupt and cannot return your securities or money, Riksgälden pays compensation of up to SEK 250,000. The scheme covers all customers, private individuals and companies alike. You must file the claim with Riksgälden yourself within one year of the bankruptcy decision. The page is dated 10 July 2019.
• Deposit guarantee: up to SEK 1,150,000 per person and institution (page dated 6 October 2026).
• Member institutions: Riksgälden's list includes Nordnet Bank AB, Avanza Bank AB, Svenska Handelsbanken AB, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB, Swedbank AB and Lysa AB.

• [Nordnet](/en/brokers/nordnet): offers an ISK and a KF, according to its Swedish website. On its ISK page Nordnet gives the deemed-income tax of 1.065% for 2026 and says you do not have to report the trades made inside the ISK. For the KF, Nordnet states that there are no fixed fees.
• Saxo and Lightyear: whether they offer an ISK in Sweden we could not document; the Swedish pages we tried to retrieve did not exist.
• Other providers in our comparison, such as Interactive Brokers, DEGIRO, Trading 212, Revolut and XTB: we have not checked them for an ISK.
• Swedish banks we do not compare: Svenska Handelsbanken offers an ISK according to its own page, which also gives the SEK 300,000 threshold. We could not retrieve the ISK offers of Avanza, SEB and Swedbank. Lysa is an automated index-fund service, not a share broker.

The directory filtered for Sweden shows which brokers in our comparison accept customers resident in Sweden; for ETF investors there is the ETF ranking for Sweden. Supervision, investor protection and tax-advantaged accounts at a glance are on the Sweden market page.

For investors resident in Sweden, the double tax treaty limits US withholding tax on portfolio dividends to 15%; 5% applies only to companies holding directly at least 10% of the voting power. The source is the US Treasury's Technical Explanation of the 1994 convention, published by the IRS. We did not retrieve the treaty text itself or the later protocol.

• Whether Sweden levies a tax on securities transactions: we did not retrieve an official source on it.
• Whether Nordnet sends Skatteverket a kontrolluppgift for an ordinary depot. Our dataset lists Nordnet as reporting tax in Sweden; its ISK and KF pages say nothing about the depot.
• How the KF's avkastningsskatt is calculated in detail, and how a foreign KF is to be reported.
• How far loss netting on a depot reaches beyond Skatteverket's example.
• The ISK offers of Saxo, Lightyear, Avanza, SEB, Swedbank and the other providers in our comparison.
• PEPP and other forms of retirement saving, which we have not researched.

1. 1Estimate your capital base: values at the start of each quarter plus deposits, divided by four. If it is below SEK 300,000 and you hold neither a KF nor PEPP, it stays tax-free in 2026.
2. 2Bear in mind that losses inside an ISK do not count and that moving holdings in from a depot counts as a sale.
3. 3Compare the interest rate on cash in your ISK with the statslåneränta at the end of November of the previous year.
4. 4If you trade through a foreign broker, complete your K4 yourself when no kontrolluppgift arrives.

• Skatteverket, Investeringssparkonto (ISK)
• Skatteverket, Deklarera aktier och övriga värdepapper and Kvittning och kvotering
• Skatteverket, Om aktier
• Skatteverket, Svenska kapitalförsäkringar och pensionssparanden and Försäkringar
• Riksgälden, Så fungerar investerarskyddet, Så fungerar insättningsgarantin and Banker och institut anslutna till investerarskyddet
• Finansinspektionen, Uppdrag och verksamhet
• IRS, Technical Explanation of the 1994 US–Sweden convention
• Nordnet, Investeringssparkonto, Kapitalförsäkring and Prislista
• Svenska Handelsbanken, Investeringssparkonto

This article is for information only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice.