You may apply for cancellation

You can apply for cancellation on the basis of fixed requirements as from 1 April 2025 at the earliest.

On our assessment of whether you fulfil the 24-month employment and education requirement, we include months as from and including April 2023.

See examples of whether you fulfil the requirements

These are public benefits in the form of, for example:

• social assistance benefits
• transitional benefit
• education assistance
• self-support and repatriation allowance
• active employment promotion initiatives
• compensation for people with functional impairment in employment

The receipt of public benefits for at least 30 months must have been within the last six years counted from the date of your application for debt cancellation.

Employment and education must together amount to 24 months and have taken place after 1 April 2023.

How to calculate the duration of employment

A distinction is made between full-time and part-time employment, as follows:

• More than 120 hours per month = full-time employment
• Less than 120 hours per month = part-time employment

If you have been employed for more than 120 hours per month, your full period of employment is included in the assessment of how long you have been employed.

Part-time employment is assessed at 60 per cent of the duration of the period of employment.

Duration of education

The duration of education depends on the type of education programme.

• Higher education in Denmark is counted as the full duration of the education programme.
• Education programmes abroad may be included if the education programme is at the level of a higher education programme in Denmark.
• Other education programmes may be included if the programme has been taken in Denmark and has been approved for state educational grants under the Act on the Danish State Educational Grant and Loan Scheme (SU-loven). In addition, the education programme must have been completed.

You can achieve debt cancellation of an amount equivalent to half of your debt to the public sector on the date of your application for debt cancellation on the basis of the fixed requirements. However, your debt cannot be reduced by more than DKK 100,000.

If you fulfil the conditions, your debt to the public sector will be reduced by a maximum of DKK 100,000. You will still have to pay off the rest of the debt.

When you submit an application, you must enclose documentation that you fulfil the unemployment and employment/education requirements. When we process your application, we will check your information.

No. If some of your debt is cancelled, and you have several debt items, the debt will be cancelled in the order prescribed by law.

We do not know yet. You cannot apply for debt cancellation on the basis of fixed requirements before 1 April 2025.We will then process the applications on the basis of the date they are received.

Until the application has been processed, we will continue to collect your debt, so that you pay off the debt. See how on the If you fail to pay your debt page. Even if you apply for debt cancellation you will still have to pay into any instalment payment plan.

You can apply for cancellation of debt to the public sector that we collect or can collect. You can see who the public sector is on the See on whose behalf we collect debt page (in Danish).

You cannot achieve cancellation of:

• Foreign debt that we collect
• Debt on which someone has a mortgage charge
• Taxes and duties relating to real property
• Debt to private individuals collected by the Debt Collection Agency. This might, for example, be maintenance payments or child support payments in addition to the statutory contribution.

If you apply on behalf of a company, an association, a self-governing institution or a foundation, special rules will apply. You can read about these rules on the If you cannot pay your business debt page.

No. No, as a general rule this is not possible. Debt cancellation is not likely if your private debt is substantial and significantly exceeds your debt to the public sector.

Instead, you can apply for debt restructuring from the bankruptcy court. You can do this if, for example, a large part of your debt is to your bank or a financing company. In the bankruptcy court, you will have the opportunity for a combined arrangement with all of your creditors (the parties to whom you owe money). You may also contact your creditors yourself to agree on an arrangement or composition.

Find information about debt restructuring at domstol.dk.

You can use our indicative debt calculator to get an idea of how long it can take to pay off the debt compared to how much you can pay per month:

Our indicative debt calculator

If you can pay off your debt within around ten years, the chances of being granted cancellation are small.

When we calculate whether you can pay off your debt

See two examples of how we calculate how much of your debt you can pay off:

What can you pay?

Yes, if the debt was incurred while you were married or cohabiting. In this situation, we assess the possibility of debt cancellation on the basis of the entire household’s income, expenses and your assets. This means that we will also consider your spouse’s/cohabiting partner’s personal data.

You can read about our processing of personal data on the Privatlivspolitik (Privacy policy) page (in Danish).

If you are applying as a private individual, sole proprietorship or co-owner of a limited partnership, you must provide:

• Your household’s income and expenses
• How much you own and owe
• Whether you are in line for any inheritance.

You must fill in all relevant fields in the form and document that you are unable to pay off your debt. Follow the guidance in the form, which you can find on the Application for cancellation of my debt page.

If you are applying as a company, an association, a self-governing institution or a foundation, read more on the If you cannot pay your business debt page.

We need documentation of your finances so that we can assess whether you are able to pay off your debt. We examine the age of your debt, and how it was incurred.

If you incurred the debt while cohabiting with your partner, we assess whether you can pay off your debt on the basis of the finances of your entire household. This means that we consider your household’s combined income, expenses and debt, as well as your assets. We do this to determine whether your household’s fixed expenses are reasonable. Among other things, we consider whether your household:

• Has excessive living expenses
• Has a car that is necessary for you and/or your cohabiting partner to travel to and from work
• Has children for whom the household must provide.

This means that once you have been granted cancellation of your debt to the public sector, you:

• May not have extensive private debt
• Must be able to pay your living expenses without incurring new debt.

As a general rule, you must not have incurred debt on a continuous basis. If the debt was incurred recently and represents a large share of your total debt, the debt is less likely to be cancelled. This is included in our assessment.

Examples of debt incurred on a continuous basis:

Outstanding tax

You have failed to declare your tax information correctly for several years. Outstanding tax has therefore been calculated for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 income years.

Since you have accumulated outstanding tax for three consecutive years, we assess that you have incurred the debt on a systematic basis.

Child support payments

You have to make child support payments on a monthly basis, but you have not paid child support for the last one and half years.

Since you have therefore accumulated debt concerning child support payments every month during the last one and half years, we assess that you have incurred the debt on a systematic basis.

If your income is uncertain because, for example, you receive the state education grant (SU), receive a student salary, a public benefit or are undergoing rehabilitation, we cannot assess whether you can pay off your debt in the future. Your income will be included in an overall assessment of whether you can achieve full or partial cancellation of your debt.

Example of uncertain income

You receive unemployment, sickness or maternity/paternity benefits (dagpenge), but expect to gain employment soon. You therefore have the prospect of a significantly higher income. As you currently have an income of a temporary nature, we cannot assess whether you will be able to pay off your debt to the public sector in the future.

This is an individual assessment. Debt related to criminal offences concerns fines, compensation and victim reparation contributions. A police statement concerning the criminal offences is part of our assessment.

We assess:

• Whether your social/health conditions are related to your debt
• Whether your debt has been incurred on the basis of several social/health conditions, which together may support debt cancellation
• Whether your social/health conditions are the reason that you are unable to pay off your debt
• Whether your social and health conditions are ‘special’. This might, for example, concern substance abuse, homelessness, life-threatening illness, mental illness or other serious health conditions.

See two examples of how we assess special conditions in relation to debt cancellation: