The ROT deduction in 2026 — the rules every trade contractor needs

The ROT deduction in 2026 is 30 % of the labour cost including VAT, capped at SEK 50,000 per person per year. Two owners of the same home can claim up to SEK 100,000 between them. The deduction applies to labour only — never materials, travel or machine hire — and the home must be at least five years old.

The conditions in short

The customer must own the home where the work is carried out — a house, a tenant-owned flat or an owner-occupied flat — and live there wholly or partly. The home must be at least five years old. The customer must have paid enough tax during the year to use the deduction, and you as the contractor must hold F-tax status.

The deduction is claimed by you as the contractor: you deduct the amount directly on the invoice and apply for the remainder from Skatteverket, the Swedish Tax Agency, once the customer has paid their share.

Which work qualifies for ROT?

Repair, maintenance, conversion and extension of the home: a bathroom renovation, a re-roof, facade painting, electrical and plumbing work, floor laying, drainage at the house foundation. The rule of thumb is that the work has to be carried out in, or in direct connection with, the home.

What does NOT qualify: new builds, work on a home less than five years old, materials, travel costs, machine hire — and garden work that does not touch the house itself (lawns, free-standing walls, paving out on the plot). For groundworks contractors the boundary matters especially: drainage at the foundation qualifies, paving the patio normally does not.

Why the quote must separate labour from materials

Because the deduction applies to the labour cost only, the quote and the invoice have to separate labour and materials clearly. Sloppiness here produces the wrong deduction — at worst a clawback from the Swedish Tax Agency and a very unhappy customer.

Always calculate on the actual labour cost. Shifting material cost over to labour to increase the deduction is tax fraud, and the Swedish Tax Agency audits this industry actively.

Worked examples

Bathroom renovation: labour SEK 120,000 incl. VAT, materials SEK 60,000. ROT = 30 % × 120,000 = SEK 36,000. The customer pays 120,000 + 60,000 − 36,000 = SEK 144,000. A sole owner has then used SEK 36,000 of their SEK 50,000 for the year.

Re-roof: labour SEK 200,000 incl. VAT. 30 % would be SEK 60,000 — but the cap is SEK 50,000 per person. A sole owner gets SEK 50,000; two owners sharing it get the full SEK 60,000 (SEK 30,000 each). If you want to run your own numbers, we have a free ROT calculator.

Handle ROT automatically in the quote

In Bliqat, labour and materials are separated automatically in every quote, the ROT deduction is calculated according to the rules above, and the customer’s price after the deduction is shown straight away — in the quote, at digital signing and in the invoice basis. You skip the manual arithmetic, and the split the Swedish Tax Agency wants to see is already there.

Common questions

Can the ROT and RUT deductions be combined?

Yes, but they share a joint cap of SEK 75,000 per person per year, of which ROT may be at most SEK 50,000. RUT covers household services such as cleaning — for trade work it is ROT that applies.

What happens if the customer has no tax headroom left?

The payment to you as the contractor is refused and you have to claim the remaining amount from the customer. Check with the customer before the job that they have ROT headroom left — and write into the quote that the customer is responsible for having it.

Updated 2026-06-10. This guide is general information — for the current tax rules, see Skatteverket, the Swedish Tax Agency.