Denmark raised its commuting deduction by up to 98 øre per kilometre in 2026, but foreign residents are less likely to claim any work-related deductions than native Danes, according to Statistics Denmark income tables, risking higher monthly taxes on the same salary.
The deadline is Monday 20 July to update your preliminary tax assessment and have the higher commuting deduction rates included in your July salary, according to Skattestyrelsen. Many foreign workers in Denmark may miss it, not through negligence but because the system assumes knowledge they often lack.
Statistics Denmark income tables show that in 2023, around 49 percent of employed residents with non-Western origin had any work-related deduction recorded, compared with 61 percent of residents with Danish origin. The commuting deduction itself is not broken out by nationality in official statistics, but this gap is the closest available proxy, and it is significant.
A self-reported benefit buried in Danish
The commuting deduction is not automatically updated in your monthly preliminary assessment when rates change. You must log into skat.dk with MitID and enter or update your distance in field 417 if you want the higher 2026 rates to affect your monthly tax. If you do not, you pay more tax each month until the final assessment.
For 2026, a law passed at the end of June (lov nr. 616 af 30. juni 2026) increased the standard rate from 2.23 to 3.17 kroner per kilometre for distances between 25 and 120 km, according to Skattestyrelsen. With an increase of 0.89 kroner per kilometre, a worker commuting 80 kilometres a day for 220 days gains around 15,600 kroner more in deduction annually. At a 37 percent marginal tax rate, that is roughly 480 kroner more in net monthly income, but only if you update field 417 before the 20 July payroll cut-off.
Official guidance exists in English on skat.dk. The digital form itself does not. Foreign residents who cannot navigate Danish bureaucracy often rely on HR, but employers cannot change field 417 on your behalf. They only follow the tax card Skattestyrelsen sends them.
Who loses out
Internationals are more likely to rent in cheaper outer municipalities and commute into Copenhagen or Aarhus. They are also more likely to work on temporary contracts, live in English-speaking workplaces, and never touch their tax settings. The result is a structural disadvantage baked into the income tax system itself.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Denmark claim the commuting deduction each year. Skattestyrelsen describes it as one of the most widely used deductions in the country. An internal analysis of Statistics Denmark StatBank data suggests that residents registered as foreign citizens claim several thousand kroner less in total deductions than Danish citizens at similar income levels, pointing to underuse of self-reported deductions like commuting.
Tax adviser Maria Karlsen at Dansk Magisterforening told Politiken that expats living in outer areas often have longer commutes but much lower use of the deduction. She described it as an information and language problem, not a legal one.
The 2026 change nobody saw coming
Most years, deduction rates are adjusted quietly via annual regulations. This time, lov nr. 616 af 30. juni 2026 introduced differentiated increases for the 2026 income year: a larger rise for standard commutes up to 120 kilometres, a smaller rise for very long distances above 120 kilometres, and an additional supplement for designated outer municipalities raising the effective rate by up to 98 øre per kilometre.
According to Skattestyrelsen, if you want the increased transport deduction to apply to your July salary, you must update your preliminary income assessment in field 417 yourself. The higher rates will otherwise be reflected only in your final tax assessment for 2026, processed in 2027.
That distinction between the annual assessment and the monthly withholding was not spelled out in most media coverage. If you miss the adjustment, you will still receive the higher deduction when your final tax assessment for 2026 is processed in 2027, but your monthly cash flow in 2026 will be lower.
Cross-border commuters face even more complexity
EU and EEA residents who live in southern Sweden or northern Germany and work in Denmark can claim the deduction, provided Denmark has primary taxing rights and general conditions are met, according to Skattestyrelsen.
Students with study jobs can claim the deduction for travel between home and their workplace, not for travel to university, provided their total daily commute exceeds 24 kilometres (more than 12 km each way). Cross-border workers under special expat tax schemes or limited tax liability face additional rules that advisory bodies say are poorly explained in English.
Why Denmark keeps raising the deduction
Government ministers have argued in parliamentary debates that higher commuting deductions encourage labour mobility and ease recruitment in shortage areas. Outer municipalities face depopulation and long commutes, and boosting the deduction there is presented as a targeted tool to make living outside the big cities financially viable.
Critics from left-leaning and green parties argue the increase is environmentally counterproductive. During the finance committee debate, MP Sofie Carsten Nielsen argued that Denmark was effectively raising state support for kilometres driven to and from work while asking citizens to drive less for the climate.
During parliamentary debate, then Employment Minister Troels Lund Poulsen defended the policy, arguing that the deduction was a necessary correction of Denmark’s high tax burden for those who must commute long distances, and that without it certain jobs would become economically unattractive.
What to do now
If you miss the 20 July deadline for July salary, you can still update your preliminary assessment later. The change will affect subsequent months’ net income once processed. Log into skat.dk, open your forskudsopgørelse, and adjust field 417 with your daily commuting distance in kilometres.
Skattestyrelsen offers English-language phone support, and in some cases online chat assistance. Øresunddirekt and Workindenmark provide advisory content for cross-border and foreign workers, some of it in English and Swedish. The form itself remains in Danish, so have a translation tool ready or ask a Danish-speaking colleague.
If you do nothing, you will still receive the higher deduction when your final tax assessment for 2026 is processed in 2027. But you will have paid too much tax every month until then. According to Eurostat, Denmark has one of the highest implicit tax rates on labour in the EU, several percentage points above the EU average, making every deduction you miss real money you could have used now.
