Background

 

The Norwegian tax authorities are modernizing the VAT area. The work started in 2019 and is planned to be completed during 2023. The modernization work try to:

• increase compliance with the tax rules

• reduce the opportunities for hidden finances

• simplify for businesses
   

Why the Norwegian tax authorities are modernizing

• The regulations have become increasingly complex to deal with.

• Lack of compliance within the VAT regulation results in various competitive conditions and loss of revenue for the state.

• The VAT area is more or less unchanged since it switched from sales tax to value added tax in 1970, and is based on manual work operations. 

New requirement from the Norwegian tax authorities during the modernization period

• New registration solution for VAT registered entities (completed)

• New VAT submission solution (under development)

• Sales and purchase report (for assessment at the Ministry of Finance)

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What is new?

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• Common information structure and set of rules for all types of VAT submissions

• Flexibility: code-based instead of fixed fields

  • From static forms to digital interaction

  • Moves away from today's numbered records - replaced with a dynamic list of specification lines

  • The VAT message reuses the Standard Tax Codes code list from the SAF-T standard (the VAT message will still be at a very aggregated level)

• Easier for taxpayers to fulfill the disclosure obligation. Possibility of comments for message in total and per line:

  • Removes much of the need for comments - a VAT return that covers more

  • Structured notes for the most common conditions

  • Remarks in free text

  • Attachments

• Refund: The VAT registered can state a KID to be used for the tax refund

• Fewer sources of error through validation before submission

• Each message is given a unique identifier to make it easier to identify each message

• Improved setup / visual presentation of the VAT return

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What can we deliver?

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EBS Consulting has developed an ERP system independent VAT portal for reporting to the Norwegian tax authorities. The solution is made in Oracle APEX and can be setup both as a cloud solution or on-premise. The solution uses the Norwegian SAF-T files as basis for the VAT reporting. It is a requirement that the customer can produce a valid SAF-T extract according to the requirements from the Norwegian tax authorities. The files must contain VAT details at the transaction level.

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The solution has ready-made interfaces to ID Portalen (for authentication, eg with BankID) and to Altinn for validation and reporting.

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