Register a company to work in Norway

Every company and every self-employed individual who goes to work in Norway needs to register their business with the Brønnøysund Register.

This gives you an Organisation Number, and without this you may not get paid by a Norwegian company, and you may be subject to significant fines for non-compliance.

We can deal with this for you, quickly and painlessly.

The guide that follows is for limited companies, but sole traders and partnerships have very similar processes.

The very first stage is that we need to be authorised to act for your company, and we will ask you to sign an authority letter allowing us to act on your behalf.

Then we will obtain the necessary information about the company from Companies House, and prepare and submit the form to the Brønnøysund Register Centre.

This is equivalent to registering a Branch at Companies House. It is not a Norwegian Company.

This process takes about 4-6 weeks to complete as the paperwork needs to be physically posted to Norway.

On completion, the company is issued an Organisation number which is the reporting number that has to be used, and provided to customers.

However, you are compliant once the process is commenced and you can notify customers that the Org Number is “applied for”.

Technically, the company is given an Organisation Number which is similar to the company registration number and another Organisation Number for reporting contracts and employment.  This second number is similar to a combined PAYE Reference and a Corporation Tax UTR, and this is actual reference that will be used.

The company will also be recorded as a “NUF”, which translates as a Branch of a Foreign Company.

These numbers are all set and structured automatically, and reporting under the worng reference is very difficult to do.

As part of the process, a director of the company will become the nominated individual being responsible for reporting in Norway, and they will receive copies of the relevant correspondence from Norway.

We will also add ourselves as the “Contact Person” will allows us to view and action almost all relevant correspondence from the tax office and we will effectively take on day-to-day responsibility as your agent for all filing in Norway.

Of course, it remains the company’s responsibility to notify us of all relevant matters and to provide us with the necessary information on time to make those filings.

If the director has a D-Number or wants to be more involved in the reporting this should be resolved at the time of Registration as additional submissions are required.

Not unreasonably, Norway expect all filing to be on time and will issue late filing penalties at the drop of a hat.

Filing responsibilities fall into two categories:

1. Report the contracts you are involved with
2. Report any employees working in Norway and pay any payroll taxes on time

We will file the first contract reporting on your behalf as part of the package around the registration of the company.

Every contract is reported by every party to the contract and the tax office matches the reporting to identify reporting failures and risk assess tax loss.  It is much, much, easier just to be compliant today than face a tax demand later.

Employees who do not have a D-number are required to provide a very recently Notarised copy of their passport to the Norwegian Tax authorities to obtain a D-number and pay taxes.  The Norwegian Tax Office and most Police Stations will do this for free if you are physically in Norway.

Otherwise, employers must ensure that recently Notarised passports are obtained for all employees where a payroll tax liability arises, as they could be liable otherwise.

An orderly administration system is essential to avoid getting it wrong in Norway.

Payroll reporting requires that the employee is registered and then the pay and tax reported by the 5th of the month following.  Tax and National Insurance is due monthly, and employee deductions and employer NI are paid separately with unique payment references.

The payment date is the 15th following, but employee contributions appear to have plans to be paid earlier. 

We can report the payroll and advise you on all payroll matters around working in Norway for a fixed monthly cost.

You may need to speak to your UK accountant about A1 forms and Foreign Tax Credit Relief on your UK payroll.

Finally, all taxpayers must file a tax return in Norway every year.  These are issued pre-completed, but sometimes extra deductions require to be claimed by amending the Return.  This is a separate service with differing levels of complexity.

If you don’t report payroll taxes when you should, the company may become liable for Corporation Tax in Norway. Compliance with this will be shockingly expensive.