Income, self-employed, 2005

National level

Frequency: Annual

Timeliness: The statistics is published about 50 weeks after reference year.

Not relevant.

Statistics files with data from tax returns, depreciation forms, forms for calculating personal income, profit and loss account, and general trading statements that have been through the linking and estimation programs are stored.

The survey shows the effect of the tax system on self-employed persons. The statistics give information on self-employed persons' income and costs from the ordinary tax assessment, which are the basis for calculating the taxable revenues. These include operating income and operating costs from the general trading statement, information on depreciation and depreciation basis from depreciation forms and information on the basis for personal income and capital yields from personal income forms.

The income and property survey for self-employed persons has been conducted annually since fiscal year 1991 for the Ministry of Finance.

Major users are the Ministry of Finance and the research activities in Statistics Norway. Data from the survey are included in tax models and are used for tax research, distribution analyses and various analyses of the split-income model. In addition, the data are used in the national accounts on business activities in the household sector.

No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 8 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given in the Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of Statistics Norway’s key principles for ensuring that all users are treated equally.

The statistics are related to the Tax Statistics for Personal Taxpayers.

Statistics Act § 2-1, 3-2.

Not relevant.

The population is all physical persons who operate businesses at their own account and risk. The tax return statistics define the population as all persons with entrepreneurial income, entrepreneurial deficits and/or estimated personal income from such business activities, regardless of the size of the entrepreneurial income/loss and the ratio between entrepreneurial income/deficit and other income. The unit of analysis is sole proprietorship (business) and self-employed person.

From the income year 2004 the tables include residents age 17 years or older.

The statistics is based on information from ordinary tax assessment. The data is obtained from the tax offices in the form of copies of tax returns, depreciation forms and forms for calculating personal income for self-employed persons. The classification of industries is based on information from the business register.

From the income year 2009 self-employed persons with operating income under NOK 50 000 are exempt from reporting trading statement.

The sample consists as of income year 2003 of all self-employed persons who has delivered their tax assessment electronically through Altinn.

Mandatory electronic submission of income statement as of 2015

From 2015 onwards, all self-employed must submit their tax information electronically. At the same time, the Directorate of Taxes has launched a simplified reporting solution for self-employed with simple tax relations.

Income statistics for self-employed has until then been a sample survey in which electronically submitted income statements were weighted to give numbers on self-employed in sole proprietorships. Since from this year on we had access to all submitted income statements electronically, the income statement consisted of a full count, with the exception of those with no obligation to dispatch an income statement due to low annual turnover. This change resulted in a minor disruption of the time series, and complicates direct comparisons with previous years. For example, this year there was a considerable increase of over 10 per cent in the number of submitted income statements within arts, entertainment and recreation, education and information and communication.

The data is collected electronically from the Directorate of Taxes. There has been a change in how these data are organized, taking affect from 01.01.2009. This may have influenced the comparability with previous years.

A number of checks and corrections are made to ensure consistency both within a single form, between the main form and the supplementary form and between the tax return data and trading statements. The main part of the checks and revisions are done by automatic procedures.

The sample is weighted (until 2015 figures, see below), and stratified by the industry and the source of the main income (entrepreneurial income or wages and pensions) of the self-employed person. The calculation of weights is detailed in Notater 2001/66: Oddbjørn Haugen, Utrekning av vekter til inntekts- og formuesundersøkingane 1999 (in Norwegian only).

Most of the amounts are estimated at a personal level. Relevant items from the depreciation forms are aggregated at business level, even though parts of the amounts is a part of the husband's/wife's taxable amount.

Not relevant

Not relevant

The statistics is comparable from 1993 to 2002. There have been minor changes in the tax rules for this period, which have influenced the basis and therefore the continuity of the statistics. There were major changes in the forms documenting the self-employed tax assessment in 2003. Self-employed within primary industries were, for example, obliged to deliver separate depreciation forms. As of 2003, all self-employed delivered the same type of depreciation forms, and only one form per person. Several items were shifted to new forms. There were also changes in Statistics Norway's data collection process. Previously, data was collected for a sample of 5 000 self-employed. As of 2003 all self-employed who delivered data by Altinn were included in the data (almost 100 000 self-employed in 2003). As of 2004 transport and communication was split from independent occupations. Also self-employed without industry were not included in independent occupations. From 2012 the social security contribution in primary industries was altered to the same rate as other industries. Therefore it is from 2012 only possible to split type of main income in two: main income from wages and pensions or main income from self-employment.