Barsel.dk

It is the calculation of your maternity/paternity benefit rate that is the critical factor in determining how much you can get in compensation. It is Udbetaling Danmark – Public Benefits Administration that makes the calculation. The calculation is based on your annual income.

Contact Udbetaling Danmark (new window)

If you have not worked as a self-employed person or private entrepreneur throughout the whole income year, then it is your tax assessment notice as an employee or a financial statement signed by an accountant for an entire year that is included in the calculation of your compensation. The financial statements must be determined in the same way as the tax assessment notice.

If you have questions about what is included in the calculation, you can contact Udbetaling Danmark – Public Benefits Administration.

Contact Udbetaling Danmark

As a parent, you may be entitled to up to 26 weeks of leave with unemployment benefits from Udbetaling Danmark – Public Benefits Administration if you lose a child. This is called ‘grief leave’.

In addition, you may be entitled to a payment from Barsel.dk. You qualify for a payment if:

• you are receiving unemployment benefits during grief leave from Udbetaling Danmark – Public Benefits Administration

• you lost the child within 32 weeks after the child was born

• you or, if relevant, the other parent has not already taken the leave.

The rules governing payments for self-employed people entered into force on 1 January 2021. You can therefore only get paid by Barsel.dk while on grief leave as a self-employed person if you have taken leave, given birth and lost the child on 1 January 2021 or later.

The duration of the payment depends on how much maternity/paternity leave you or, if relevant, the other parent of the child has previously taken. In other words, if you were on leave before the child died, these weeks will be deducted from the total number of weeks that you can be paid for during the grief leave.

Read about reimbursement weeks from Barsel.dk

How to apply

When applying for unemployment benefits from Udbetaling Danmark – Public Benefits Administration during a grief leave, you will also automatically be applying for a payment from Barsel.dk. The amount is paid out each month. The first payment will be from April 2021. See how much you can receive here

Apply for unemployment benefits during grief leave from Udbetaling Danmark – Public Benefits Administration

On 1 July 2023, new rules were introduced for how shared leave should be divided between the mother and father/co-mother. Here you can see how the weeks were divided until 30.06.2023.

Upon birth

Reserved for the mother:

• 4 weeks prior to expected birth

• 2 weeks after birth

Reserved for the father/co-mother:

• 2 weeks’ paternity leave after birth (inside the first 10 weeks)

• 3 weeks after the 2 weeks´ paternity leave (must be taken before the child reaches the age of nine)

To be shared between mother and father/co-mother:

• 25 weeks’ shared leave

Upon adoption

To be shared between mother and father/co-mother:

• 4 weeks prior to receiving the child abroad for both parents

• 1 week prior to receiving the child in Denmark for both parents

• 2 first weeks after receiving for one of the adoptive parents

• 2 weeks for the other adoptive parent (inside the first 10 weeks)

• 3 weeks for the father/co-mother after the first two weeks (must be taken before the child reaches the age of nine).

• 25 weeks’ shared leave

The compensation period of 4 weeks prior to the due date is flexible, i.e.:

• If you give birth before the due date (e.g. 1 week), you get 3 weeks.

• If you give birth after the due date (e.g. 1 week), you get 5 weeks.

You must select "Fædre- og forældreorlov" ("Paternity and parental leave") or "Forældreorlov" ("Parental leave") in NemRefusion when applying for paternity leave benefits from Udbetaling Danmark. Then you will also automatically be applying for the three weeks after the parental leave.

We consider you to be self-employed or a private entrepreneur if

• you have registered a result that is higher than the maximum maternity/paternity benefit rate with the Danish Tax Agency

• your personal salary income is lower than your result from self-employment.

It does not matter where your income is from. Therefore, you still need to pay even if your income is from, for example, rental income and royalties.

Take the test above and see whether you need to pay.

Here you can see which sections from your annual tax assessment notice are included in the calculation of your result as a self-employed person or private entrepreneur.

1. Section 111 (profits from self-employment)

2. Minus Section 112 (losses from self-employment), if this section is filled out.

3. Minus Section 113 (deduction for working spouse), if this section is filled out.

= your result that is used in the assessment of whether you need to pay a contribution. The result is before tax.

If you have stopped being self-employed or a private entrepreneur, you do not have to pay to Barsel.dk. You are considered to have stopped if all of your companies that you are personally liable for have been closed in the period from 1 January in the income year to 30 September in the year in which we are collecting contributions from you.

You can contact us if:

• you have deregistered all CVR numbers for which you are personally liable with a closing date in the CVR register.

You must send us documentation if

• you have had income yourself without a CVR number. If you no longer

  have income as self-employed, you must send us documentation. If, for example, you have had income from renting out a property that you no longer own, you must send us documentation for the property having been sold.

• You have stepped down as a stakeholder in a general partnership.

• You have stepped down as a general partner in a limited partnership.

• You have stepped down as a partner in a partner company.

Together with the documentation, you must send us a written declaration that the result from self-employment is exclusively from this source.

Send your documentation

If you have personal salary income from abroad that is not shown in ‘Din beregning’ (‘Your calculation’) on the payment order from Barsel.dk, then we do not have information about this. If you want us to reassess your case, you must send a copy of what corresponds to an annual tax summary from the country in which the income was earned or other payslips for the most recently completed income year. Send in your documentation

The contribution you are already paying is for your employees so that the company can get maternity/paternity reimbursements when employees take maternity/paternity leave. The new contribution is for self-employed persons/private entrepreneurs so that such individuals can also receive payments when they go on maternity/paternity leave. The scheme is based on a solidarity principle, so if you fulfil the criteria as a self-employed person/private entrepreneur you have to pay the contribution - regardless of whether you are going to take maternity/paternity leave or not.

You are obliged to pay contributions to Barsel.dk as a self-employed person or private entrepreneur even though you are not going on maternity/paternity leave and therefore not able to use Barsel.dk.

Barsel.dk is a social security scheme based on a solidary principle that is financed via mandatory, statutory contributions. The criteria for a person being liable to pay contributions are specified in Section 4(a) in the the Danish Act on Amending the Act on Maternity/Paternity Compensation (Lov om ændring af barselsudligningsloven). You can read more under ‘legislation’

You have to register the deduction in your tax statement for the current income year. The deduction is included in the calculation of your company’s result.

You can report the result from your company on the annual tax assessment notice at www.skat.dk/tastselv. You can start reporting information on the annual tax assessment notice in the middle of March after the end of the income year.

Barsel.dk can at most provide compensation for 37 hours per week. If you are both self-employed and a salaried employee and have received salary during a maternity/paternity leave, your employer may also be entitled to some or the whole of the amount paid by Barsel.dk. If the hours in your employer’s application and your application add up to more than 37 hours, your employer will first be refunded for the hours in the application the employer submitted and you will then be entitled to compensation for the remaining hours (up to 37 hours).      Maternity/paternity benefits from Udbetaling Danmark – Public Benefits Administration are distributed according to the same principle, and if your repayment of the compensation is due to new information about the distribution of hours, you will have received a letter from Udbetaling Danmark – Public Benefits Administration asking you to repay the money received for the number of hours that you have to repay Barsel.dk for.    Example: If you need to repay maternity/paternity benefits to Udbetaling Danmark – Public Benefits Administration for what corresponds to 10 hours, you must also repay Barsel.dk for those 10 hours.

If there is a lower hourly rate in the field “Hourly rate notified of by Udbetaling Danmark (Timesats oplyst fra Udbetaling Danmark) in the letter from Barsel.dk about the repayment than in the letter you received in connection with your last payment for the same period, then Barsel.dk has received new information about your hourly rates from Udbetaling Danmark.  

Barsel.dk can provide compensation for a fixed number of weeks. Some weeks are reserved for you, but other weeks must be distributed between you and the other parent if there is one (and if the other parent is self-employed) or to the other parent’s employer. The weeks must be distributed based on when the leave is actually taken and not based on when the weeks are applied for. In other words, if Barsel.dk pays compensation to you and then finds out that another parent has taken leave before or concurrently with your leave, it may mean that you have been paid for weeks that should have been paid to the other parent or the other parent’s employer. If you have been paid compensation for one or more weeks that should have been paid to the other parent or the other parent’s employer, you must repay the compensation for these weeks.  If you are not a salaried employee or if your hourly rates have been adjusted (as described above under sections 1 & 2), then our request for repayment is due to you no longer being entitled to receiving that compensation. You can contact Barsel.dk if you want to know from which date you were no longer entitled to receive compensation.

Act

Lov om barselsudligning på det private arbejdsmarked

Lov om ændring af barselsudligningsloven Optagelse af selvstændigt erhvervsdrivende i barselsudligningsordningen

Lov om ændring af barselsudligningsloven Regulering af bidragssatsen til barselsudligningsordningen

Executive order

Bekendtgørelse om barselsudligning på det private arbejdsmarked

Bekendtgørelse om fællesopkrævning af visse arbejdsgiverbidrag m.v.