Content
About the statistics
Definitions
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Name and topic
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Name: Tax accounts
Topic: Public sector
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Next release
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Responsible division
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Division for Public Finance
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Definitions of the main concepts and variables
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Tax arrangements
Distributed tax, total
Distributed tax, total is the sum of paid taxes.Advance tax arrangement
The advance taxpaying arrangement covers all personal taxpayers in income year t. Personal taxpayers pay taxes in advance, either as advance tax deduction or pay-as-you-earn. The employers are responsible for advance tax deduction, and the tax is drawn before payment of wages. Advance tax deduction is calculated to be in accordance with expected tax for income year t. Pay-as-you-earn is used for payment of capital and income tax which cannot be drawn with advanced tax deduction.The arrangement also includes employers' national insurance contributions and taxes on dividends to foreign shareholders.
Non-personal taxpaying arrangement
The non-personal taxpaying arrangement includes all non-personal taxpayers, companies and institutions assessed as a separate tax entity in income year t+1.Interest and tax collecting costs etc.
This covers for instance interest on tax payments paid overdue, collection income and collection expenses, cancelled tax debt, etc.Types
Ordinary taxes to central government
Ordinary taxes to central government include capital and income tax to central government from personal and non-personal taxpayers. Surtax from personal taxpayers is also included here.Ordinary taxes on extraction of petroleum
Ordinary taxes on extraction of petroleum include tax on capital and income from extraction of petroleum and pipeline transportation of petroleum products.Special income tax on extraction of petroleum
Special income tax on extraction of petroleum is in addition to ordinary taxes on extraction of petroleum because the petroleum companies have the opportunity to utilize a valuable and limited resource of extraordinary returns.Tax equalization contribution to central government
Tax equalization contribution to central government concerns all taxpayers who pay income tax to municipalities. Tax equalization contribution is calculated on the same basis as income tax to municipalities.Taxes to county authorities (incl. Oslo)
Taxes to county authorities include taxes on income from personal taxpayers.Ordinary taxes to municipalities
Ordinary taxes to municipalities include capital and income tax from personal taxpayers.Member contributions to the National Insurance Scheme
The member contributions to the National Insurance Scheme are calculated as a percentage of total personal income. There are different rates for wages, pensions and trade income.Employer contributions to the National Insurance Scheme
This tax is calculated as a percentage of wages and other compensations for employees. The tax is then paid by employers through the advance tax arrangement. These contributions are differentiated, so rates vary by industry and geographical location.
Tax to Svalbard
Tax to Svalbard includes tax on income from personal and non-personal taxpayers’ and members’ social security contributions to the National Insurance Scheme. More information can be found in Svalbard Taxes Act (“Svalbardskatteloven”)Tax creditors
Tax creditors include municipalities, counties, central government and the National Insurance Scheme. 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.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.
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Standard classifications
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Not relevant
Administrative information
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Regional level
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Municipalities.
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Frequency and timeliness
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Monthly. Published between the 15th and the 20th in the month following the tax payments.
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International reporting
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Quarterly non-financial accounts for general government.
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Microdata
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The data are stored in SAS-datasets and archived on a Linux-server.
Background
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Background and purpose
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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.
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Users and applications
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The main users are the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation, 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.
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Equal treatment of users
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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.
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Coherence with other statistics
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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 .
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Legal authority
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Statistics Act Section 3-2 (administrative data processing system).
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EEA reference
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Council Regulation 2223/96, Commission Regulation 264/2000, Regulation (EC) No 1221/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council.
Production
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Population
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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).
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Data sources and sampling
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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.
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Collection of data, editing and estimations
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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.
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Seasonal adjustment
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The statistics are not seasonally adjusted.
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Confidentiality
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Not relevant
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Comparability over time and space
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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.
Accuracy and reliability
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Sources of error and uncertainty
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When county municipalities became a separate tax creditor, the differences between booked taxes in the municipal tax accounts and data forwarded from the Directorate have become smaller, but not completely eliminated. This can be because paid taxes for earlier years have been distributed by the old method. The differences will gradually be eliminated as all taxes paid are distributed directly to the county municipality.
The Directorate does not forward files to Statistics Norway before they have received data from all municipalities.
No sampling errors because of full census.
In some cases displacement between months in tax payments cause large alterations in individual municipality figures compared to the same period the previous year. This is normally adjusted through the year.
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Revision
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Published figures are final and normally not subject to revisions.