Let me be clear from the start: Sweden has the 8th highest tax burden in the world according to the OECD 2024. Yet some on the left consider it morally questionable that taxpayers are allowed to reduce their tax burden through ROT and RUT deductions.
To me, that view is completely absurd.
ROT and RUT are not benefits. They are deductions. To use them, you must first have paid tax in Sweden. It is simply a reduction of your taxable income — not free money. If you have no tax to deduct against, you get nothing.
Personally, I have never used either ROT or RUT, but I fully understand those who do. They already pay an enormous amount of tax and are simply getting a small portion back.
The Left, however, loves to call these deductions “benefits” or “subsidies”. That is a deliberate distortion. A benefit is something you receive without any contribution. A deduction is something you receive because you have already contributed and paid tax.
If the Left wants to play that game, I have no problem renaming everything:
Either we call all benefits deductions — and require that you must first pay tax to qualify.
Or we call all deductions benefits — and simply hand out the equivalent amount to ROT and RUT users with no requirement to have paid any tax at all.
The latter option would mean that far more people could suddenly take full advantage of the “benefit” — since they would no longer need any actual contribution to offset it against.
Then we might finally see who is really living off other people’s money.
AI-generated image with Grok
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