Sweden's tax authority has ordered six crypto companies operating in Boden to pay nearly SEK 540 million (approximately $56 million) in additional taxes after finding that the firms used business structures to obtain tax benefits they were not entitled to. According to reports from SVT, the tax agency said some companies concealed crypto mining activity to claim tax advantages that would not have been available if the businesses had been classified as crypto miners. Patrik Lillqvist, head of intelligence at Skatteverket, stated that the arrangements were designed to secure tax advantages that the companies are not entitled to, with companies often having special arrangements to conceal their mining operations.
The latest assessments form part of Skatteverket's review of the crypto industry between 2024 and 2026, with nine companies receiving tax adjustments totaling more than SEK 500 million during that period. As reported by SVT, nine crypto companies have received tax adjustments totaling more than half a billion Swedish kronor between 2024 and 2026, with six of them operating in Boden. The Swedish public broadcaster's earlier investigation found in 2024 that companies had deprived the state of around 1 billion Swedish kronor in taxes, with most of the cases concentrated in Boden. The tax treatment has become a source of tension between the industry and Swedish authorities, particularly after Sweden moved in 2023 to remove electricity tax relief previously available to data centers.
Boden, a city in northern Sweden, has attracted crypto miners for years due to its access to power and data center infrastructure. According to SVT, the region was already home to around 10 crypto mining companies by 2018, when operators were increasingly looking to Sweden as a location for mining facilities. The latest Skatteverket cases concern how companies described the nature of their businesses for tax purposes, with some firms presenting operations in a way that hid their role in creating new units of cryptocurrencies through mining. The authority criticized companies that entered Swedish communities and used arrangements that the authority believes deprived the state of tax revenue, with several companies challenging Skatteverket's decisions in court.
Bikupan Datacenter, which has operated in Boden and Robertsfors, is among the companies contesting the tax authority's position. As reported by SVT, the company has been granted corporate restructuring after becoming unable to pay its debts, while its tax dispute has reached Sweden's Supreme Administrative Court. Johanna Törnblad, CEO of Bikupan Datacenter and HIVE's Sweden country manager, rejected Skatteverket's assessment of the company's historical operations, stating that Bikupan's restructuring application explains the company's position that crypto mining was performed by external mining pools independent of the HIVE group. Sweden's administrative court and administrative court of appeal have so far sided with the tax authority in the cases they have considered.
HIVE Digital Technologies, whose Swedish operations have been involved in the longer-running tax dispute, has been moving resources toward high-performance computing and artificial intelligence. According to previous reports, HIVE generated record fiscal 2026 revenue of $298 million while expanding its AI computing business, with its high-performance computing operation generating $19.5 million during the fiscal year, up 94% from $10 million a year earlier. The company reported 440 megawatts of global power capacity across Canada, Sweden and Paraguay at the end of fiscal 2026, with its installed Bitcoin mining hashrate increasing from 6.5 exahashes per second to 25.1 EH/s during the same period. HIVE has been converting its Boden facility into a Tier 3 liquid-cooled high-performance computing data center designed to support 2,000 Nvidia GPUs.
