Forskudsopgørelse Explained: How Denmark’s Preliminary Tax Assessment Works for Expats

Introduction

Your Danish employer doesn’t calculate your tax. SKAT does.

Every November, SKAT publishes a preliminary income assessment for the year ahead. It’s SKAT’s estimate of what you’ll earn, what you can deduct, and how much tax you should pay. Your employer then withholds that exact amount from each paycheck, automatically, every month.

The problem is that SKAT’s estimate is only as good as the information behind it. If your salary changes, you move jobs, you start freelancing, or you have foreign income that hasn’t been reported, the estimate is wrong. A wrong estimate means a surprise in spring: either a tax refund you didn’t expect, or a restskat bill you definitely didn’t want.

For expats especially, the default figures SKAT pre-populates are often incomplete. Understanding what the forskudsopgørelse is, what’s in it, and when to update it is one of the most practical tax habits you can build in Denmark.

What the forskudsopgørelse actually is

Think of it as a tax budget for the year ahead. SKAT takes everything it knows about you and calculates what your withholding rate should be. That rate goes onto your tax card. Your tax card goes to your employer. Your employer withholds accordingly.

The complementary document is the årsopgørelse (annual tax assessment), which arrives in March and covers the year just passed. Where the forskudsopgørelse is a forecast, the årsopgørelse is the reconciliation.

Both live in TastSelv at skat.dk/tastselv. Both require MitID to access.

Your tax card: frikort, hovedkort, bikort

The forskudsopgørelse generates your tax card. There are three types, and which one applies depends on your income level and employment situation.

Your personal allowance is DKK 54,100 in 2026. If your annual income is below that, a frikort (tax-exemption card) is the right card: no income tax withheld, though AM-bidrag of 8% still applies on earned salary.

Most employed expats use the hovedkort and bikort split.

Hovedkort (primary card): Goes to your main employer. Includes your personal allowance and all your deductions. Results in the lowest possible withholding rate for that income.

Bikort (secondary card): Goes to a second employer, a freelance client, or any other income source. No allowances apply. Withholding runs higher.

The important rule: only one employer can use the hovedkort at a time. If two employers use it simultaneously, you’ll pay too little tax and face a restskat bill. It’s your responsibility to tell each employer which card to use.

What’s pre-filled and what you need to add yourself

SKAT pre-populates some fields automatically from data it already holds: your employer’s payroll reports, bank interest, mortgage interest from Danish lenders, and some pension contributions. But it doesn’t know everything, and it doesn’t update automatically when things change.

Fields that are typically pre-filled include your salary from Danish employers (reported via e-Indkomst), interest income from Danish banks, your mortgage deduction from Danish lenders, the standard employment deduction (12.75% of salary, up to DKK 63,300), and your commuting deduction if you’ve registered it before.

Fields expats often need to add or update manually are a different matter. Foreign income of any kind, including salary, freelance, rental, interest, and pension, won’t appear automatically. The same applies to foreign bank account balances and interest, non-Danish investment portfolios, freelance or B-income earned outside a Danish employer relationship, pension contributions that are deductible but not auto-reported, and any changes to your commuting deduction if your workplace or working-from-home pattern has changed.

The general rule: if the income or deduction doesn’t originate inside Denmark’s reporting systems, SKAT probably doesn’t have it.

Expat-specific considerations

Foreign income. If you earn anything outside Denmark, you’re required to report it in your forskudsopgørelse. SKAT won’t have it by default, and not knowing isn’t a defence if you underpay.

To add non-Danish income: log into TastSelv, open the forskudsopgørelse, go to ‘Andre felter’ (Other fields), then select ‘Udland’ (Non-Danish tax matters). From there you can add foreign bank interest, foreign employment income, and other non-Danish sources in the relevant sub-fields.

Non-Danish securities. When you first arrive in Denmark, you’re required to report the value of any foreign investment portfolio to SKAT. This initial report goes via TastSelv (under ‘Aktier og andre værdipapirer’), and once registered, your expected annual income from those holdings should appear in your forskudsopgørelse each year. Check skat.dk for the current deadline and reporting requirements, as these are tied to your specific date of full tax liability.

The 55% default. If you start a job in Denmark without a tax card, your employer withholds at 55%. That’s the fallback rate, deliberately high to prevent underpayment. Getting your tax card sorted before your first paycheck is worth the effort.

When to update your forskudsopgørelse during the year

SKAT’s initial November estimate is a starting point. Update it whenever your actual situation diverges from what it assumed.

The most common triggers:

• Salary change (up or down): always enter the new full-year expected total, not the monthly figure.
• New job or job loss: losing a job removes your employment deduction, which can increase the withholding rate even as income drops. Update quickly.
• Starting or stopping freelance work: B-income (freelance, consulting, Airbnb, rental) needs to be entered so SKAT can calculate what you’ll owe. Without it, you’ll under-withhold.
• Taking out a loan or paying one off: interest deductions change.
• Buying or selling property: triggers changes to deductions and potentially ejendomsværdiskat.
• Working more or fewer days from home: directly affects your commuting deduction. Over-claiming the commuting deduction is a common source of restskat.

You can update your forskudsopgørelse as many times as needed throughout the year. There’s no limit and no penalty for correcting it. The updated version automatically generates a new tax card, sent to your employer within a few days.

One thing worth knowing: you can’t simply inflate your income figure to increase your withholding rate. Because of how the employment deduction is calculated, entering a higher income than you actually expect can reduce what’s withheld for many income levels. If you want to pay more tax during the year to reduce restskat risk, lowering a deduction (such as the transport or interest deduction) is the correct approach.

What happens if the estimate is wrong

Every March, your årsopgørelse (annual tax assessment) arrives in TastSelv. It reconciles what you actually earned in the past year against what was withheld.

Two outcomes:

Overskydende skat (refund): You overpaid during the year. SKAT pays this back to your NemKonto automatically from late April. No action required.

Restskat (outstanding tax): You underpaid. SKAT adds a day-rate interest charge of 3.70% on the amount owed from 1 January. Smaller amounts are collected via a surcharge of 5.70% rolled into the following year’s tax as a reduced personal allowance. Larger amounts above DKK 25,368 are collected in instalments later in the year. Check your årsopgørelse for the exact payment dates and method that applies to your situation.

Giving SKAT an interest-free loan by over-withholding isn’t ideal either, but for most expats the practical priority is avoiding restskat rather than optimising the refund.

How to access and navigate TastSelv

Everything happens at skat.dk/tastselv. You log in with MitID, the same system used for most Danish government services. If you don’t yet have MitID, you can order an E-tax password (TastSelv-kode) from skat.dk as a temporary workaround, though MitID is the better long-term setup.

Once logged in: click ‘Preliminary income assessment (Forskudsopgørelsen)’ to see the current year’s estimate. The fields are mostly in Danish, but SKAT has published translated PDF examples of what a completed forskudsopgørelse looks like, available on the same page.

The field labels in TastSelv are in Danish, but most are findable via the ‘Oftest tilføjede felter’ (Frequently added fields) menu, which groups the most common scenarios: new job, unemployed, pension, and so on. Selecting the relevant scenario surfaces the right fields automatically. For less common situations, TastSelv has a search function where you can look up a specific field name in Danish.

When to get professional help

Most employed expats on a single Danish salary with no foreign income can manage the forskudsopgørelse themselves. The system is reasonably well-designed for that straightforward case.

The picture changes when you have:

• Income from outside Denmark: employment, rental, investments, pension
• Business income or freelance work spanning multiple jurisdictions
• A U.S. tax filing obligation alongside a Danish one
• Share awards, carried interest, or equity compensation from a foreign employer
• A mid-year relocation with partial-year tax liability in two countries

In those situations, the interaction between what goes into the forskudsopgørelse and what ends up in your årsopgørelse, and how that interacts with your home country’s tax system, is where getting it wrong becomes expensive. A cross-border tax adviser who knows both systems will pay for themselves quickly.