How BIK (förmånsvärde) is reported in payroll

How a taxable benefit (BIK) expense splits into reimbursement and social fee, and where the förmånsvärde amount lands in the export.

When a benefit category is set up as a taxable benefit (BIK), a Swedish employer owes a 31.42% social fee (arbetsgivaravgift) on the benefit value. CLVR builds that fee into the amount drawn from the employee's benefit allowance, so the number the employee actually receives is always the benefit value on its own, never the fee. This article explains how a BIK expense splits into reimbursement and social fee on a payroll line, where the förmånsvärde amount comes from, and how that differs from a non-BIK expense.

Reimbursement is the receipt amount, minus the social fee

For a BIK expense report, the amount drawn from the allowance is the receipt total plus the 31.42% social fee. The payroll line does not report that full debited cost. It reports only the reimbursement: the benefit value the employee gets back, with the social fee stripped out.

• The reimbursement is what appears in the Pris inklusive moms column of the Excel export and is the value the employee is reimbursed through payroll.
• The same number is registered as the Förmånsvärde (the benefit value the employee is taxed on).
• The social fee is paid to Skatteverket by the employer. It is not paid to the employee and does not get its own payroll line.

So for one BIK receipt you see a single amount on the line, not the larger debited cost.

Where the förmånsvärde amount appears

The Excel payroll export is the readable workbook that carries förmånsvärde. For a BIK line it fills in two related cells:

• Löneart för förmånsvärde: the configured pay code for the benefit value.
• Förmånsvärde: the benefit value itself (the same amount as the reimbursement).

A non-BIK line leaves both of those empty, because a tax-free benefit has no benefit value to tax.

How a non-BIK expense differs

A non-BIK (tax-free) expense carries no social fee at all. The payroll line reports the full amount the allowance covered, VAT included, with nothing stripped out.

• No Förmånsvärde value and no Löneart för förmånsvärde pay code.
• The amount covered by the allowance is reimbursed in full (any part of the receipt the allowance could not cover is simply not reimbursed; it is never converted to a förmånsvärde or a social fee).

BIK lines stay on one row

In the Flex HRM export, only non-BIK expenses can be split into two rows for deductible VAT (a net row and a VAT row), and only when your benefit configuration enables it. BIK lines are never split that way: a BIK expense is always a single row carrying the covered benefit value. Förmånsvärde amounts themselves are carried in the standard Excel export, not the Flex HRM file.

Salary sacrifice to pension is not BIK

The salary-sacrifice-to-pension benefit looks similar but is handled separately. It is not a taxable benefit, so it produces no Förmånsvärde line. It uses the reduced 24.26% social fee rate instead of 31.42%, and in the Excel export the gross amount appears in the Brutto column on the bruttolöneavdrag pay code rather than as a förmånsvärde. See the related article on how salary sacrifice to pension appears in payroll.

Troubleshooting

• The line amount is smaller than the receipt total. For a BIK expense this is expected: the line shows the benefit value the employee receives, not the receipt plus social fee that was drawn from the allowance. The difference between the two is the 31.42% social fee, which goes to Skatteverket.
• A förmånsvärde column is blank. That expense is in a tax-free (non-BIK) category, so there is no benefit value to report. Whether a category counts as BIK is a benefit setting; check the category if you expected it to be taxable.
• There is no separate social-fee line. That is by design. The social fee is reserved out of the allowance and remitted by the employer; it never appears as its own payroll row.