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Norway’s SAF-T Requirements
Understand more about Norway SAF-T including when to comply, submission deadlines and filing requirements and how Sovos can help.
VAT in Norway: All you need to know about Norway’s SAF-T Requirements
Norway’s SAF-T reporting requirements are evolving as tax continues to digitize
Reform
Designed to reduce the compliance burden and administrative costs associated with audits, while giving tax authorities greater visibility of company’s tax and financial data, SAF-T has continued to gain popularity across a growing number of European countries.
Initially introduced in 2017 on a voluntary basis, Norway’s tax authority made SAF-T reporting compulsory in January 2020.
At present, the Norwegian SAF-T must only be submitted on demand in connection with an audit. However, it is expected to be extended to areas such as corporation tax.
On 1 January 2022, the tax authority introduced digital submission of its VAT return, which was also enhanced to capture other data that’s already required whenever a SAF-T submission is needed. However, as SAF-T doesn’t yet need to be submitted regularly in Norway, the completion of these new summary boxes creates a challenge for companies who are unfamiliar with SAF-T.
Have questions? Get in touch with a Sovos expert on Norway SAF-T.
Norway SAF-T Quick facts
- Norway’s SAF-T requirements apply to businesses with bookkeeping obligations who use electronic accounting systems including registered foreign bodies.
- Businesses with a turnover of less than NOK 5 million who aren’t subjected to mandatory bookkeeping are exempt unless they have electronic bookkeeping information available.
- Enterprises with less than 600 vouchers annually that hold accounts in spreadsheets or a text editor program are exempt.
- Norwegian SAF-T is submitted on request and doesn’t currently have periodic submission requirements.
- SAF-T is a standardised XML format containing exported accounting information.
- Norwegian SAF-T files will be submitted primarily by upload via the Altinn internet portal.
- Testing is available and recommended by the tax authority.
Mandate rollout dates
- 1 October 2016: The first version of the SAF-T Financial was published on the Norwegian tax authority website.
- 9 June 2017: The administrative body on Norwegian SAF-T standards met for the first time to manage standards to suit both public and private sectors. The body meets at least once a year.
- 1 January 2017: Voluntary adoption of SAF-T began.
- 1 January 2020: Norway introduced mandatory SAF-T reporting on demand.
- 1 January 2022: Norway updated its VAT Return to allow for more detailed reporting and flexibility, as the new return structure removes numbered boxes and instead requires users to map their transactions to Norway’s existing tax codes that are currently utilised in the SAF-T mandate. The submission frequency of the VAT return remains the same, but users can now directly submit returns from their ERP system to allow for a more efficient process; where this is not possible, users may still upload XMLs or manually populate data via a portal.
How can Sovos help?
It’s a challenge to extract data from the ERP, map to the correct SAF-T format and ensure it meets tax authority requirements without triggering the need for further scrutiny. Sovos software takes care of this by extracting the data, performing a full analysis and generating the submission-ready SAF-T file.
Our experts continually monitor, interpret and codify regulatory changes into our software, reducing the compliance burden on your tax and IT teams.