Tax accounts, May 2013

The statistics are among other things used for continuous tracking and management of municipal finances in connection with the National Budget, Revised National Budget and the municipal finance proposition, and as the basis for reports from the Technical Reporting Committee for Local Government Finance. They are also used by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development to calculate block grants to the municipalities in connection with ongoing revenue equalization. Data are available from 1985.

The main users are the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, Norwegian Association of Local Authorities, municipalities and counties. The statistics are used in connection with macro monitoring and calculation of block grants to municipalities in connection with ongoing revenue equalization.

Access to figures prior to publication

The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development are allowed to have figures under work from the register of paid and distributed taxes when needed. Other use of this material is not allowed until the figures are released by Statistics Norway.

Tax statistics are part of the process of estimating municipal revenues in connection with the national accounts and National Budget. The tax statistics are also one of the sources used in connection with reporting to Eurostat of short-term indicators for public finances.

Total tax payments are also included in other statistics, but the figures are not always directly comparable. Excise on motor vehicles and value added tax are included in tax figures from the Central governments fiscal account. In this statistic, payments to the National insurance scheme also include contributions paid by the central government. The payments are reported in separate posts.

General government revenue and expenditure also include figures for total taxes. These statistics are based on assessed taxes and not paid taxes.

The tax accounts statistics are not suitable for comparing tax revenue in Norway with tax revenue in other countries. For international comparisons we recommend using statistics from Eurostat or OECD .

Statistics Act Section 3-2 (administrative data processing system).

Council Regulation 2223/96, Commission Regulation 264/2000, Regulation (EC) No 1221/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

The data include taxes paid to the Chief Municipal Treasurer. Also included are taxes for persons without permanent connection to the country (from the Petroleum Tax Office in Sandnes) and oil taxes. The data are distributed among various tax creditors (municipalities, counties, the state and National Insurance) and various tax schemes (advance and corporate income taxes, employers' National Insurance contributions and National Insurance contributions).

Administrative registers: The statistics are based on monthly settlement of the tax accounts. The data are obtained electronically from the municipalities by the Directorate of Taxes and assembled in a file for Statistics Norway sent through a closed system for data transfer. Registered oil taxes (ordinary and special petroleum taxes) are sent to Statistics Norway in a separate report.

The data are obtained from the chief municipal treasurers on the second working day after the end of the month via various suppliers of data to the Directorate of Taxes. The Directorate checks the data and organizes a file for transfer to Statistics Norway in the course of three days. The data are entered in Statistics Norway’s database and are supplemented with petroleum taxes for ordinary and special petroleum taxes, and various checks of the input data are done. The tax collector distributes the taxes among all the tax creditors directly, down to each municipality.

Various control programs are run on the database, including controls on the number of municipalities, the use of invalid municipal numbers or invalid accounts, as well as checks against sums at the municipal and county level. The internal consistency of the tax accounts is also checked.

Not relevant

The taxes for Oslo have been distributed between municipality and county municipality since April 1999. Because monthly files are accumulated, breaks in the time series were not eliminated before the end of 2000.

In 2008, the Directorate of Taxes introduced a new system for tax reporting (SOFIE) which led to some changes. Also, from 2008 tax accounts statistics for Svalbard are published. For these reasons, Statistics Norway started a new time series for the tax accounts in StatBank beginning from August 2008.

Tax creditors include municipalities, counties, central government and National Insurance. Advance tax arrangements cover all personal taxpayers during the fiscal year. The corporate tax system covers all non-personal taxpayers such as joint-stock companies and institutions taxed as separate tax subjects fiscal year period t-1. After deducting the margin provision, taxes paid are distributed by the tax collector to the various tax creditors partly with the help of calculated distribution figures. Paid and distributed taxes are distributed by type of taxes including income and wealth taxes to municipalities, counties and central government, National Insurance Scheme members' contributions, employers' National Insurance contributions, and tax equalization tax. Oil taxes are collected separately.

Local taxes on property are not included in the tax accounts statistics, but wealth attributed to property ownership may influence the total sum of ordinary taxes. Property tax statistics are published annually.

Not relevant