The EOR process in Denmark: a signed offer, then a Danish payslip

The process starts the moment your candidate accepts, because the Danish clock for written terms runs from the first working day, not from the offer. At that point we need two short sets of details, one from you and one from the new hire.

From you: the job title and a short description of the role, the annual salary in DKK, the start date, normal weekly hours, the place of work (an address, home or both), whether the person is on probation and whether the package includes an occupational pension or a bonus. Those answers decide which clauses go into the Danish contract and which items the payroll has to carry from the first month.

From the new hire: full name and address, a Danish civil registration number (CPR-nummer) or personal tax number if they already have one, nationality, and the bank account for salary. Anyone without EU or EEA citizenship must hold a SIRI residence and work permit before day one, which reshapes the whole timetable; our guide to permits for non-EU staff explains the schemes. People holding EU, EEA or Swiss citizenship can start without a work permit. Their first step is an EU residence document, after which a CPR number is issued, so build a few days for that into the start date. For the Pay Limit Scheme (beløbsordningen), the most common route, the 2026 salary floor is DKK 552,000 a year, and pay must land in an account at a Danish bank held in the employee’s own name.

One more decision belongs at this stage. If the role is salaried, the employee is a funktionær, and the Salaried Employees Act (Funktionærloven) then governs notice periods, sick pay and probation. Probation for a salaried employee is capped at 3 months, and during it the employer’s notice shrinks to 14 days. The so-called 120-day rule (shorter notice once paid sick days reach 120 in a 12-month span) exists only where the contract spells it out, so it is chosen now or not at all.

A person moving to Denmark sorts out three things before the first pay run: a CPR number, a tax card and a NemKonto. All three belong to the employee, but a missing one shows up immediately on the payslip, so we track them from the signed offer onwards.

CPR number. Anyone staying more than 3 months (6 months for EU, EEA or Nordic citizens) registers with the municipal Citizen Service (Borgerservice) and receives a CPR number. A permanent Danish address is needed. Someone working in Denmark for a shorter stay gets a personal tax number instead, applied for online or on form 04.063, and keeps the same digits for life. The health insurance card is issued with the CPR registration.

Tax card. Skattestyrelsen creates the electronic tax card (skattekort) from the person’s preliminary income assessment (forskudsopgørelse). Skat.dk tells newcomers to expect the preliminary assessment roughly a fortnight after a complete application. The card gives us two numbers: the withholding rate (trækprocent) and a monthly allowance (fradrag), the slice of pay on which no A-skat is withheld.

Bank account and digital ID. Public authorities pay into a NemKonto, the account linked to the person’s CPR number, and everyone working in Denmark needs one. MitID, the national digital ID, opens access to banks and to Skattestyrelsen’s self-service, which the employee uses to check the tax card. If any of these items is still in progress on the start date, the employment can begin anyway; the first payslip simply has to be built around what exists.

By the seventh calendar day of employment, the employee must hold written information on the core terms. That deadline comes from § 3 of the Danish statute on written terms, Ansættelsesbevisloven, and the Act reaches everyone whose average week exceeds 3 hours. Because we send the contract before the start date, the core terms are normally covered on day one.

The 7-day items are:

• who the two parties are, with addresses, and where the work will be done
• a description of the job, and the start date
• for a fixed-term job, how long it is expected to last
• any probation period
• the pay, its components and the pay dates
• the normal working day or week, plus the overtime arrangements and pay
• for unpredictable schedules, the reference hours and minimum notice

A second group may follow within 1 month: paid leave, notice periods, training rights, any collective agreement and the social security bodies receiving contributions. Electronic delivery works, provided the document can be saved and printed and there is proof it was sent. Getting it wrong is costly: the compensation ceiling is 13 weeks’ pay, rising to 20 where the breach is aggravated. Our article on written terms and probation in Denmark goes clause by clause.

Three records start running in the first weeks, and each one feeds the payroll later. Working time comes first. Since 1 July 2024, the Working Time Act (Arbejdstidsloven) has obliged employers to keep an objective, reliable and accessible record of each employee’s daily hours, kept for 5 years. A person who genuinely sets their own hours can be exempt, but that has to be stated in the contract.

Holiday also begins on day one. The Holiday Act (Ferieloven) gives 2.08 days of paid holiday for each month worked, to be taken during the holiday year in which they are earned, running 1 September to 31 August. Someone who starts in October can therefore book a long weekend before Christmas on days already earned, and can take further days unpaid if the team agrees.

The holiday calendar is longer than most newcomers expect. Days earned between 1 September 2026 and 31 August 2027 can be taken until 31 December 2027, a 16-month window. The main holiday, three weeks in a row in the May-to-September season, is fixed by the employer with 3 months’ notice, so a new hire’s first Danish summer break is best agreed by early spring.

Sickness has its own reporting rule. Under the Sickness Benefit Act (Sygedagpengeloven) § 35, the employee must tell the employer about sickness no later than 2 hours after the start of the working day. Salary keeps flowing for a salaried employee who falls ill. The first 30 calendar days are on the employer’s account, and from day 31 the municipality’s sickness benefit can be reclaimed as a refund. The employer-period rules themselves only bite once the person has been employed for 8 weeks and has worked at least 74 hours, so a sick day in week two is simply paid as salary.

The first Danish payslip carries a fixed set of deductions. Take a Copenhagen employee, salaried, single and outside the national church, earning DKK 55,000. In a standard 2026 month the slip reads:

• gross salary: DKK 55,000
• labour market contribution (arbejdsmarkedsbidrag, AM-bidrag) at 8%: DKK 4,392
• income tax (A-skat) at the tax-card rate of 35.40%, after the monthly allowance: DKK 14,990
• employee share of ATP, the statutory supplementary pension: DKK 99
• net pay: DKK 35,519

If no tax card exists yet when the payroll runs, the law leaves no room for estimates: the employer must withhold 55%. Kildeskatteloven § 48(8) sets that rate. The overpaid tax is not lost, because it comes back through the annual reconciliation, but a 55% deduction is a poor welcome, which is why the tax card sits so high on the pre-start list.

Two later months look different. Salaried staff receive a 1% holiday supplement (ferietillæg) either when holiday starts or, more usually, with May pay (for 1 September to 31 May) and August pay (for 1 June to 31 August). In the Copenhagen example May nets DKK 38,461 and August DKK 36,500. On the employer side the month costs DKK 55,683.50 in total, of which DKK 683.50 is statutory on-costs: ATP at DKK 198, the remainder the quarterly levies averaged per month.

If this is your company’s first person in Denmark, our first-hire walkthrough for Denmark puts the CPR number, tax card and holiday set-up in the order they happen.

Each payroll ends with a report and a payment. Each employee’s pay, tax, AM-bidrag and ATP go to the income register (indkomstregisteret) through eIndkomst, and the A-skat and AM-bidrag withheld must reach the tax account by the same cut-off.

For small and medium employers the deadline is roughly ten days after month end: September 2026 pay is due by 12 October, and December 2026 pay by 18 January 2027. For large employers there is no grace period: the deadline is the pay month’s final banking day, which for October 2026 is 30 October. Skattestyrelsen publishes the full calendar on its deadlines page.

The same eIndkomst report feeds ATP into Samlet Betaling, ATP’s joint collection, and that body sends the employer a quarterly invoice covering ATP, AUB, AES, the financing contribution and Barsel.dk. Our article on the Danish payroll process follows a pay run in more detail, and the EOR services page lists which of these steps we carry out.

The employee’s side of the year closes later. Skattestyrelsen sends each person an annual tax assessment notice (årsopgørelse), which compares the tax withheld with the tax actually due. For the split of duties behind all this, read our explainer on the employer of record model or start from the Employer of Record Denmark homepage.

Later changes follow the same discipline. Any change to salary, hours or title must be confirmed to the employee in writing by its effective date (Ansættelsesbevisloven § 5). If the employee updates their preliminary income assessment, for example after a move to Aarhus, Skattestyrelsen issues a new tax card and the next pay run picks up the new rate automatically.