Denmark · Tax regime
2026 Personal Income Tax Reform (Top-Top Tax)
Reformed
Last verified July 2026
Adopted by the Folketing on 16 May 2024, effective from 2026. The single top bracket splits into middle, top and top-top brackets.
Denmark raised taxes on very high earners in exactly the year it made its expatriate regime more generous — a deliberate split between the people it wants to import and the people already there. For a UHNW client the two measures point in opposite directions, and which one applies to you depends entirely on whether you qualify for forskerordningen.
Qualifying routes
641.2k DKK
Middle-bracket tax
7.5% above DKK 641,200 of personal income after labour market contribution
777.9k DKK
Top-bracket tax
7.5% above DKK 777,900
2.59M DKK
Top-top-bracket tax
an additional 5% above DKK 2,592,700
The facts
- Qualifying figure
- 2.59M DKK
- Total landed cost
- An extra 5 percentage points on income above DKK 2,592,700, on top of the existing structure and municipal tax.
- Physical presence
- Danish tax residence
- Family
- assessed individually
- Permanent residency
- n/a
- Citizenship
- n/a
- Language test
- n/a
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- Danish tax residence and personal income above the relevant thresholds
What can go wrong
- Some secondary sources cite DKK 2,588,300 for the top-top threshold. SKAT's own page says DKK 2,592,700 — use SKAT.
- Share income remains a two-tier structure: 27% up to DKK 79,400 and 42% above, with thresholds doubled for married couples living together at year end. There was no 2026 reduction to a flat 42% — that claim is wrong and circulating.
- Municipal tax (and church tax if you are a member) applies on top of all brackets.
- The forskerordningen's 32.84% flat rate insulates qualifying expatriates from all of this for 7 years — which makes the sequencing of that once-in-a-lifetime election even more valuable.