Saturday, 31 January 2015

Norwegian personal tax returns 2014

Every person who works in Norway, even commuter workers, are required to file a personal tax return in Norway. This includes employees and self-employed workers.

The 2014 individual Tax Assessments are sent out by the tax office during February/March 2015 and the deadline for filing personal tax returns online is 31st May 2015.

Final assessments are issued in October. There is then a 6 week window for appeals.

Many foreign workers in Norway do not know if they have paid the correct taxes, are entitled to tax credits or are paying the correct social costs.

It is common that employers submit incorrect information especially if they are non-Norwegian companies with little experience of Norwegian payroll taxes.

They commonly submit incorrect statistics of days worked in Norway and as such tax and tax credits are incorrectly calculated.

For offshore workers, employers almost never claim the seafarers tax allowance for their employees. Seafarers are entitled to receive back up to 30% of paid income tax assuming they meet the seafarer allowance criteria.

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Sunday, 11 January 2015

Norwegian personal tax returns for expat workers in Norway

Every employee that works for a company operating in Norway or within Norwegian waters must pay Norwegian income tax on their earnings received for work carried out within Norwegian territories.

The employer will report income, tax deducted, benefits received and days worked that are subject to Norwegian taxes. Where Norwegian Social Insurance is applicable, this will be deducted and reported a the same time.

However, the reporting of these facts does not guarantee that the correct taxes have been paid over by the employer or the correct tax credits available have been applied. This is the responsibility of the employee to consider and claim for.

Every foreign worker must considers their Norwegian tax code and whether they are entitled to claim tax credits such as the 10% standard deduction, married persons allowance or seafarers allowance.

There are also various disclosures about personal circumstances to make as a foreign worker in Norway.

Norwegian personal tax return process and disclosures are all made through the Altinn online system which holds details of all registered employees, self-employed and contract workers. Every individual can sign up to the system is they hold a personal identification number called a D-number.

There are very few UK-based accountants outside the bigger firms that specialise in Norwegian tax, personal and/or corporate. Depending on the firm, fees can range from £250 - £2,500 for exactly the same service.

At Your Tax Office we have more than 7 years experience with Norwegian tax, working on behalf of UK resident individuals, agencies and companies. We work on a flat fee basis and our personal tax return service is at a cost of £250 per year. Click here to contact us for further details.