Preliminary figures from General government revenue and expenditure show that the surplus in general government continued to decline in 2025. The reduction is due to lower taxes and distributed income from companies engaged in petroleum production. The surplus still amounted to more than 10 percent of total GDP in 2025, which is high by international standards.
Declining tax burden
The total tax burden in a country is most often measured by comparing the sum of taxes on income, wealth and production and net social contributions to GDP. Excluding petroleum taxes, these revenues amounted to just over 40 percent of mainland Norway’s GDP in 2025. The tax burden has shown a clear downward trend from the turn of the millennium until 2025. In the decade from 2000 to 2009, total taxes averaged 44.3 per cent of mainland GDP. In the next decade, up to 2019, this had fallen to 42 per cent. After a sharp increase in taxes in 2021, partly due to business owners’ adjustments to changes in dividend taxation, the overall tax burden has continued to decline, as shown in figure 2.
Support for Ukraine drives expenditure growth
Total government expenditure in 2025 is estimated at NOK 2,692 billion, corresponding to 61 percent of mainland Norway’s GDP. Of this, 50 billion were expenses related to the management of The Government Pension Fund Global, sometimes referred to as the Government Petroleum Fund’s assets – mainly interest and tax payments abroad. Excluding these, government expenditure amounted to 60 per cent of mainland GDP in 2025, as shown in figure 3. Expenditures have increased over the past three years. The main reason is military support to Ukraine – a purpose for which more than 72 billion were set aside in the 2025 fiscal budget. In government finance statistics, this military support is mainly recorded as capital transfers abroad. If these transfers are excluded, expenditures in 2025 were at the same level as the previous year, measured relative to mainland GDP.