There are record-long queues to get an estate register at the Tax Agency.
Since the start of the pandemic, processing times have tripled and are now fourteen weeks, creating problems for heirs who want to sell their relatives’ old homes.
Now the Tax Agency promises improvement.
Johannes Ciparson in Åkersberga north of Stockholm lost his grandfather in the middle of June last year. Together with other family members, he had to share the inheritance and started an estate registration with the Tax Agency. The probate took ten weeks and has had financial consequences for Johannes.
– The estate must continue to pay all its bills until it can be wound up, and you can sell a property and a condominium. So a long processing time means additional months of electricity bills, repayment of loans and interest, fees to the association or rent.
Staff shortage at the Swedish Tax Agency
The Swedish Tax Agency’s goal is for 90 percent of cases to be completed within nine weeks. But in recent years, that goal has only been reached in half of the cases. The fact that it now takes up to fourteen weeks is explained by a lack of staff and that the piles of cases grew during the pandemic.
– We and other authorities have had difficulty recruiting the right skills and we have had a higher than expected rate of departure. From September, we now have 30 new case managers for this task. If the forecast holds, we believe we will have normal queue times at the turn of the year, says Anders Koskinen, acting head of unit at the Swedish Tax Agency.
Johannes Ciparson still sees problems with the long waiting times.
– When the market is uncertain and prices fluctuate a lot or fall, it becomes very stressful. If an estate is very highly mortgaged, it can be very worrying and may end up with you having to continue the estate in bankruptcy, says Johannes Ciparson.