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Quick Summary
Once your freelance turnover passes DKK 50,000 in a 12-month period, you have to register for moms and start issuing invoices that meet Denmark’s formal requirements.
Relevant to freelancers and sole traders (enkeltmandsvirksomhed) invoicing clients in Denmark. It doesn’t cover invoicing through an ApS or invoicing clients outside Denmark, which have their own rules.
Danish moms is charged at a flat 25 %, and an unpaid invoice now accrues statutory interest at 10.00% a year.
Getting paid late is annoying. Getting the invoice itself wrong is worse, because it can cost you the moms deduction on the other end, or leave you unable to charge interest when a client sits on your money for two months. The rules here aren’t complicated, but they’re specific, and Denmark enforces the specifics.
Do you actually need to register before you invoice?
No, not right away, in most cases. If you’re doing occasional freelance work under your own CPR number and your total sales stay under DKK 50,000 across any rolling 12-month period, you can trade without a CVR number at all. This is sometimes called a personlig mindre virksomhed (PMV), and it’s the default starting point for a lot of small side gigs.
The moment it’s clear you’ll cross that threshold, though, the clock starts. Denmark’s VAT Act (momsloven) requires registration at least 8 days before your VAT-liable activity begins, according to Skattestyrelsen’s guide to registering for VAT. If you’re already trading below the threshold, treat the point where a new contract makes it clear you’ll cross DKK 50,000 as that start date, and register on Virk.dk before then, not after the money has landed.
Once you’re registered, you get a CVR number and a moms number, and every invoice you send has to carry it.
What has to be on a Danish invoice
The VAT Executive Order (momsbekendtgørelsen) sets out exactly what a full invoice needs, according to Skattestyrelsen’s rules on invoice content (in Danish). Miss one of these and, in the worst case, your client’s accountant rejects it and asks you to reissue it, which is a bad look when you’re trying to get paid quickly.
| Required element | What it means in practice |
| Invoice date | The date the invoice is issued or made available, not the delivery date |
| Sequential invoice number | No gaps, no repeats, in your own numbering series |
| Your name, address, and moms number | CVR or SE number, shown as, for example, “CVR-nr. DK 12345678” |
| Client’s name and address | Full legal name, not just a first name or project nickname |
| What you delivered | Description and scope of the work, specific enough to identify it |
| Delivery date (if different from invoice date) | Common for freelance work billed after the fact |
| Price per unit or the total ex moms | Before any discounts are folded in, unless they’re already included in the unit price |
| 25 % | for almost all freelance services in Denmark |
| The moms amount | Shown separately from the ex-moms total |
If you’re using invoicing software, most of this is filled in automatically once you’ve entered your CVR details. That’s the main reason freelancers move off Word templates and onto a proper tool fairly early.
Tip
Put an explicit due date on every invoice, even a short one like 14 days. Under Denmark’s Interest Act (renteloven), interest only starts automatically from a due date you’ve actually set, per the consolidated text of renteloven (in Danish). Send an invoice with no due date and you’ve handed your client 30 extra days before you can charge them a single krone of interest.
When does the client actually have to pay?
If your invoice states a due date, that’s the forfaldsdag, and interest on late payment runs from the day after it, automatically, with no reminder needed first. If you don’t set one, the client gets 30 days from when you asked for payment before interest can start.
Between two businesses, the law’s own default cap on an agreed payment term is 30 days from the date you send the invoice or request payment. Longer terms can be agreed in writing, but a term that’s unreasonably long relative to what you’re owed can be struck down if it’s clearly unfair to you as the one waiting to get paid.
Case Study
Say you invoice a Danish client DKK 18,000 for a branding project, plus 25 % moms, for a total of DKK 22,500. You set a 14-day due date. The client pays 45 days late.
You’re entitled to interest on the full DKK 22,500 at 10.00% a year for those 45 days, which works out to roughly DKK 280. Because this is a business-to-business invoice, you can also add a flat DKK 310 compensation fee on top, once, regardless of how small or large the invoice was. If you’d sent a written reminder along the way, you could have added up to DKK 100 for that too.
None of this requires a lawyer. It’s arithmetic, and most invoicing software will do it for you.
What happens when an invoice sits unpaid
Renteloven gives you three separate tools, and you can stack all of them on the same overdue invoice.
The interest itself moves twice a year. It’s set at Danmarks Nationalbank’s official lending rate as of 1 January and 1 July, plus a fixed 8 percentage points, so it changes every six months rather than annually. The current rate is 10.00%.
You can also send a rykker, a formal reminder letter, and charge a fee for it, capped at DKK 100 per reminder. You’re allowed to charge that fee on up to 3 reminders per unpaid invoice, with at least 10 days between each one. Send more reminders than that if you like, just not with a fee attached.
If your client is a business rather than a private individual, add the flat DKK 310 compensation fee described above. It only applies once per invoice, and it doesn’t apply to private consumers.
Tip
Late payment from a Danish business client can cost them interest, up to three reminder fees, and a flat compensation charge, all at once. Set a due date on every invoice, or you lose 30 days of that automatically.
How often you file and pay moms
Your moms reporting rhythm depends on your annual turnover, not on how often you happen to invoice, according to Skattestyrelsen’s page on VAT filing deadlines.
| Annual moms-liable turnover | Reporting period | Filing deadline |
| Under DKK 5,000,000 | Half-yearly | 1 March or 1 September |
| DKK 5,000,000 to DKK 50,000,000 | Quarterly | The 1st day of the third month after the quarter ends |
| Over DKK 50,000,000 | Monthly | The 25th of the following month |
Newly registered businesses report quarterly for at least the first 18 months, regardless of turnover, before Skattestyrelsen reassesses which period fits. The monthly and quarterly deadline dates above shift around weekends and Danish public holidays, so always check the exact date in TastSelv Erhverv rather than counting days by hand.
Miss a filing entirely and Skattestyrelsen adds a penalty on top of the interest: a foreløbig fastsættelse, an estimated moms bill of its own choosing, plus a flat DKK 1,400 fee, and you still have to go in and correct it to the real number afterward.
Invoicing clients outside Denmark changes several of these rules at once. EU business clients are usually billed under reverse charge with no Danish moms added, and the invoice wording has to say so explicitly.
Getting that wrong either means charging moms you shouldn’t have, or failing to charge moms you were required to. This is genuinely a case for an accountant to check your first few cross-border invoices, since the penalty for guessing wrong falls on you either way.
Tip
If you invoice regularly outside Denmark, a 20-minute session with an accountant (revisor) to set up your invoice template correctly the first time is cheaper than unwinding a moms error a year later.
Keeping the paperwork afterward
You need to keep every invoice, both sent and received, for 5 years from the end of the financial year it relates to. That’s the rule under Denmark’s Bookkeeping Act (bogføringsloven), according to Erhvervsstyrelsen’s guidance on bookkeeping and digital record-keeping (in Danish), and it applies whether you’re VAT-registered or not.
Since 1 January 2026, that recordkeeping obligation has been sharper for sole traders specifically. If your business’s net turnover has passed DKK 300,000 in each of the past two years, you’re now required to bookkeep in an approved digital system rather than a spreadsheet, and to store your purchase and sales records digitally.
In practice, most freelancers end up here well before the legal deadline forces the issue, simply because doing invoicing, moms filing, and bookkeeping in one connected system is easier than three separate habits. Billy (partnerlink/reklamelink) has a fully English interface, which is the main reason it fits an expat freelancer better than most Danish-only alternatives. Dinero (partnerlink/reklamelink) is Danish-only but handles moms filing cleanly if you’re comfortable navigating a Danish interface, or willing to use it alongside a translation tool.
Bottom Line
The invoicing rules themselves are short: register on time, put the right details on every invoice, set a due date, and know which three tools (interest, reminder fees, and the compensation charge) you can use when a client is late. The part that actually catches freelancers out is timing: the moms threshold, the registration window, and the reporting deadline all move faster than people expect once the work starts coming in.
Official sources
- Skattestyrelsen’s guide to registering for VAT
- Skattestyrelsen’s rules on invoice content (in Danish)
- The consolidated text of renteloven, Denmark’s Interest Act (in Danish)
- Erhvervsstyrelsen’s guidance on bookkeeping and digital record-keeping (in Danish)
- Skattestyrelsen’s page on VAT filing deadlines
Disclaimer
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or investment advice. Figures reflect publicly available data at time of writing. Always consult a qualified professional regarding your specific situation. See our full disclaimer.
