Advance tax for sole proprietorships

When you run a sole proprietorship and make a profit, it’s your responsibility to pay advance tax. To ensure you pay the correct advance tax, you must update your tax deduction card. 

What you must pay

The amount of tax you pay depends on your overall financial situation. When we calculate the amount of advance tax you must pay, we include

  • income from business activity
  • income from other employment
  • wealth
  • other financial circumstances

Usually, the advance tax amounts to between 34 and 50 percent of the profits from the sole proprietorship.

As a rule of thumb, we recommend that you set aside 40 percent of your profits for tax.

What you need to do

You must pay the tax in the same year as you earn the money.

Enter the expected profits in your tax deduction card so that we can calculate the advance tax for you.

You calculate the business profit by adding up expected incomes and deducting expected expenses. For guidance when calculating your profits you can open your tax deduction card and use our guide. You’ll find it under the heading «Business».

You can change your expected profits in the tax deduction card as many times as you want. You should therefore start by estimating your profits and then update the tax deduction card during the year if it’s necessary.

Log in:

Usually, we’ll send you an invoice for the advance tax four times per year.

The deadlines for paying advance tax are:

  • 15 March
  • 15 June
  • 15 September
  • 15 December

We’ll take weekends and holidays into account.

You’ll receive the invoice in your online bank if you use eFaktura (eInvoice). If you do not use eFaktura, you’ll receive it in your Altinn Inbox. If you’ve reserved yourself from online communication, we’ll send the invoice by post. You’ll receive the invoice approximately three weeks before the payment deadline.

If you do not pay an invoice by the deadline, the advance tax for the rest of the year falls due. 

If we’ve not received the payment for a period within 7 calendar days after the deadline for paying advance tax, we’ll send you a notice of enforced collection of the remaining advance tax for the entire year.

The payment deadline will then be 14 days. This means that if you do not pay by this deadline, we can enforce the collection of your advance tax by making deductions from your income or place an attachment on something you own. Interest on overdue payment is charged in addition.

Once your tax deduction card for the coming year is ready, you must log in and check that the information appears to be correct. You’ll be notified by email or text message when it’s ready.

We use the figures from your tax assessment from two years ago to calculate the advance tax, and your financial situation may have changed since then.

If you had profits in your sole proprietorship during the last two years, we’ll calculate the advance tax for you automatically.

If you expect your profits to be higher or lower than what you stated the last time you changed your tax deduction card, you can log in to the tax deduction card and update the amounts.

If we’ve calculated advance tax for you, and you expect a loss, you must enter this in your tax deduction card. Then we’ll reduce or delete your advance tax.

You can change your tax deduction card and have the advance tax calculated again as many times as you want by 15 December. If you want to change your tax deduction card for the current year after 15 December, you must use a form to contact us.

If you change your tax deduction card after receiving an invoice for advance tax, we may not be able to approve the change in time before the payment deadline.

  • If we approve the change, you must change the amount in the invoice to the new amount to pay that period. We’ll not send a new invoice.
  • If we do not approve your change, or if we’re unable to answer you before the payment deadline, you must pay the whole amount that is stated on the invoice.

If you’ve changed the advance tax to NOK zero in your tax deduction card, you can delete the invoice from your online bank without paying it.

If you pay a too high amount, you can pay a lower amount the next time the advance tax falls due. If you paid too much for the final payment in a year, you’re likely to receive a tax refund.

If you pay a too low amount, you can pay a higher amount the next time the advance tax falls due. If this applies to the final payment for the year, you can pay additional advance tax before 31 May the next year, or you can pay the underpaid tax.

Specific information if you

Once we have calculated your advance tax, you can as both an employee and a self-employed person, change the allocation between advance tax and deducted tax. You can do so by opening your tax deduction card and tick the box for changing the allocation of advance tax and deducted tax. You can make adjustments and have more tax deducted from your salary and pay less advance tax, or vice versa. The total tax you pay stays the same.

All employers who pay a salary must, as a general rule, have a separate tax deduction account in a Norwegian bank or in a Norwegian part of a foreign bank. This also applies to sole proprietorships that have employees.

If you have problems paying your advance tax by the deadline, you should consider whether the information in your tax deduction card is correct. If you have payment difficulties, you have several options.

If you pay too little advance tax, you’ll have to pay the underpaid tax the following year. If you pay too much advance tax, you’ll get a tax refund in the tax assessment the following year.

If you find that you have not paid enough tax during the year, you can pay additional tax by 31 May the next year. Then you’ll not have to pay any interest on the amount you owe. This additional payment is called additional advance tax.

See how you pay additional advance tax.

When your enterprise is newly established, you do not have to update your tax deduction card with information about expecting a loss. Instead you can provide this information in your tax return that’s sent to you in March/April every year.

If we’ve already calculated advance tax for you, and you expect a loss, you must enter this in your tax deduction card. Then we’ll reduce or delete your advance tax.

If your sole proprietorship sees a loss for several years, we do not consider your enterprise as having business activity. In this case, you do not report the loss in neither the tax deduction card nor the tax return.

If you’ve received sickness benefit from NAV as a self-employed person during the year, you must pay tax on the received benefit. Enter the amount in the fields for personal income from business activity and sickness benefit for self-employed persons, which are found under the category «Business». You must enter the same amount in both fields.

If you change your tax deduction card after receiving an invoice for advance tax, we may not be able to approve the change in time before the payment deadline.

If we approve the change, you must change the amount in the invoice to the new amount to pay for the period. We’ll not send a new invoice.
If we do not approve your change, or if we’re unable to answer you before the payment deadline, you must pay the whole amount stated on the invoice.
If you’ve changed the advance tax to NOK zero in your tax deduction card, you can delete the invoice from your online bank without paying it.

If the amount you pay is too high, you can pay a lower amount the next time the advance tax falls due. If you paid too much for the final payment in a year, you’re likely to receive a tax refund.

If the amount you pay is too low, you can pay a higher amount the next time the advance tax falls due. If this applies to the final payment for the year, you can pay additional advance tax before 31 May the next year, or you can pay the underpaid tax.

Once we have calculated your advance tax, you can as both an employee and a self-employed person, change the allocation between advance tax and deducted tax. You can do so by opening your tax deduction card and tick the box for changing the allocation of advance tax and deducted tax. You can make adjustments and have more tax deducted from your salary and pay less advance tax, or vice versa. The total tax you pay stays the same.

All employers who pay a salary must, as a general rule, have a separate tax deduction account in a Norwegian bank or in a Norwegian part of a foreign bank. This also applies to sole proprietorships that have employees.

If you pay too little advance tax, you’ll have to pay the underpaid tax the following year. If you pay too much advance tax, you’ll get a tax refund in the tax assessment the following year.

If you find that you have not paid enough tax during the year, you can pay additional tax by 31 May the next year. Then you’ll not have to pay any interest on the amount you owe. This additional payment is called additional advance tax.

See how you pay additional advance tax.

When your enterprise is newly established, you do not have to update your tax deduction card with information about expecting a loss. Instead you can provide this information in your tax return that’s sent to you in March/April every year.

If we’ve already calculated advance tax for you, and you expect a loss, you must enter this in your tax deduction card. Then we’ll reduce or delete your advance tax.

If your sole proprietorship sees a loss for several years, we do not consider your enterprise as having business activity. In this case, you do not report the loss in neither the tax deduction card nor the tax return.

If you’ve received sickness benefit from NAV as a self-employed person during the year, you must pay tax on the received benefit. Enter the amount in the fields for personal income from business activity and sickness benefit for self-employed persons, which are found under the category «Business». You must enter the same amount in both fields.

If you have problems paying your advance tax by the deadline, you should consider whether the information in your tax deduction card is correct. If you have payment difficulties, you have several options.

Find all your information on My page

Log in to My page to find an overview of relevant deadlines, tasks and claims for your enterprise.

Under Claims and payments, you can see how much advance tax you’ve already paid.