Value Added Tax

The part 2 of the business entity registration form "Coordinated register notification” is reserved for companies that are affected by the VAT regulations. It is your duty to register as soon as your sales of VAT eligible goods and services reach a certain level (se below). If the business, after the initial registration, changes its operations so that sales of goods and services that are VAT eligible are included, the mentioned part 2 is submitted separately.

Everybody running a business that sell goods or VAT eligible services is obliged to register in the VAT register when the turnover exceeds 50 000 NOK over a period of 12 months.
For charity and public institutions and organisations, the registration limit is 140 000 NOK.

A complete presentation of the rules governing VAT is found in the Act no. 66 ”On VAT”, the Stortinget’s yearly decisions on taxes, the notes on the acts and the actual ruling of the Stortinget.

The Tax Directorate has also published a guide for businesses on VAT and investment taxes. The guide (RF2020, in Norwegian) may be obtained from the Tax Office.

The general rule is that VAT (output tax) is calculated on all sales of goods and services, with a few exceptions such as health services and educational services.

Calculate output VAT when you draw goods or services from the business for your own personal use or for VAT exempted usage.

Certain sales of goods and work assignments are exempt of output VAT, either because the sale is exempted according to rules on VAT exempted sales, or because the sale falls outside the conditions of the Act.

Examples of tax-free sales are sale of goods and services abroad, sale of newspapers and books to the end consumer and inventory and machinery when the business is sold.
Businesses having this kind of sales shall be listed in the VAT register and must include the sales in the sales returns sent to the Tax Office.

Businessmen or -women who exclusively sell tax exempted goods shall not be registered in the VAT register. Exempted services include health and medicine services, banking and insurances and entertainment.

The right to deduct input VAT from procured goods
If you are registered as a businessman or -woman, you are allowed to deduct VAT from the cost of the goods and services used in your own VAT eligible business.

All input VAT deducted from the purchased goods and services must be qualified by genuine documentation, e.g. invoices, sales documents etc.

When goods are imported the printout of the customs declaration from the TVINN system, together with an account statement from the customs treasurer (tollkassereren) serves as documentation of deductible input VAT.

Provided cash payment of the imported goods, the import declaration, stamped by the customs treasurer/office will serve as documentation of deductible input VAT.

Certain expenses do not qualify for deduction of input VAT. Among these are food expenses, payment in natural goods, representation expenses and transportation of persons.

Note that the “Guide to Value Added Tax in Norway”, issued by the tax authorities and referred to in the right hand column, is not updated with respect to the amendments of the Act as of 01.07.07.