Wage totals from End of the Year Certificate Register, 2004, preliminary figures

Definition of the main concepts

Payment in cash is the sum of all payments in cash paid to the employee. It contains wages and remuneration, wages and remuneration for work abroad, cash yields of options and wages in the event of bankruptcy, etc.

Wages and remunerations amounts to the largest cash payment within the statistics. This is paid wages and remuneration, e.g. holiday allowance, sickness benefits paid by employer and the taxable part termination payments, that is not a part of independent enterprising.

Net salary basis is the accumulated payments to employees this arrangement applies to. According to this arrangement the employer is obligated to pay the employee's taxes. It consists of payments for work both in Norway and abroad.

Wages in the event of bankruptcy consists the amount paid according to the Act relating to state guarantees to cover wage demands in the event of bankruptcy and payments from the estate of a bankrupt of wages earned before the adjudication of bankruptcy.

Payments in kind are a collective term consisting of different payments and advantages employees receive in addition to the cash payments. This consists of e.g. cars, phones, and housing paid by employer.

Expense allowance is allowances covering expenses the employee has conducting the work or an assignment. This is expense allowance covering accommodation, meals or car expenses.

Basis for employer's National Insurance contributions is the sum of all payments subjected to employer's tax. This amount is the basis for calculating amount of the employer's tax the employer is obliged to pay. The basis consists of all payments in cash and selected payments in kind.

Disbursements of unemployment benefits are payments paid by the National Insurance Scheme to unemployed.

Sickness and maternity leave benefits consist of the part of the amount paid by the National Insurance Scheme.

Pensions consist of all kinds of pensions paid by the National Insurance Scheme and all others. This includes retirement pensions from the National Insurance Scheme, invalidity pensions from the National Insurance Scheme, child allowances from the National Insurance Scheme, pensions in and outside work liaison not paid by the National Insurance Scheme, payments in kind for pensioners, maintenance allowance, non-taxable grants for child care paid by the National Insurance Scheme, etc.

Special deduction contains the National Insurance Scheme estimate of the amount of special deduction the personal taxpayers are entitled to. A taxpayer is eligible for special deduction because of age, invalidity/reduced capacity to work, rehabilitation and obligation of provide for children.

Tax withheld consists of tax withheld by the employer to be paid to the tax' collectors office in Norway.

Basis for extra employers' tax for high wages . The employers are obliged to pay an extra employers' tax for every employee earning more than 16G of basis of employers' tax. The added employers' tax amount to 12.5 per cent of the amount exceeding 16G of the basis of employers' tax.

Wages for senior officials consist of wages (including advantage by buying and selling options in the work liaison), fees, and payments in kind. A senior official is defined as the employee in an enterprise earning the highest wages two consecutive years.

Work liaison is a combination of personal identification number and enterprise identification number. A work liaison is the sum of number of end of the year certificates for one employee in one enterprise. If one employee receives more than one end of the year certificate from the same employer, these are accumulated to create one wage liaison. One individual might have received an end of the year certificate from more than one employer, and the number of work liaison is therefore higher than the number of people.

Definition of the main variables

The main variables used in the statistics are gender, age and geographical distribution. Some of the tables are distributed according to qualities of the employer. One example of this is basis of employer's tax distributed by industry (see 4.3).

Institutional sector

Type of organisation, industry and portion of governmental ownership determines the code of institutional sector for the enterprise. The statistics is distributed according to classification of institutional sector:

• Public administration (State, county and municipalities)
• Governmentally owned enterprises (Enterprises run by the state, enterprises owned by the state, state enterprises, enterprises run by the municipality, independent enterprises within the municipality)
• Financial intermediation enterprises (Bank of Norway, state lending institutions, commercial banks, savings banks, mortgage companies, financial institutions, mutual funds, financial holding cooperations, life and non life insurance companies, financial ancillary activities and other financial enterprises)
• Self-employed and unincorporated enterprises.
• Non-profit institutions (Private non-business activity producer oriented institutions)

Zone for Employer's Tax

The employer's tax is graduated on geographical areas. The employer is obliged to pay a certain rate in per cent of the basis of employer's tax for the individual employee following the employee's tax municipal.

For a specification on the percentage employer's tax for specific municipalities see Statistics Norway: Statistics by subject, 00.00.20 Regional . A major part of the employees in the public administration generates employer's tax of the highest rate. This is also the case of a few special industries following a decision in ESA in 1998. The employer's tax generated by employees 62 years old and above was lowered with 4 percentage points as of 1 ^st July 2002.