The Norwegian Tax Administration’s strategy

The Norwegian Tax Administration’s strategy sets the direction for the administration’s development in the coming years.

It is based on our social mandate and sets out how we can fulfil this in the years to come in a world characterised by rapid changes and complexity.

Five strategic ambitions

We will pursue these ambitions both in our day-to-day and long-term management of the administration.

We will interact with businesses and individuals in a way that makes it easier to do what is right and harder to make mistakes

To ensure compliance and correct tax, it is crucial that our users find that it is easy to do the right thing from the start. We will make sure businesses and individuals have what they need, where they need it. Our services will centre around our users’ needs and be included as a part of other services our users deal with. This will contribute to maintaining a high level of trust in the Norwegian Tax Administration.

Through more active communication and better interaction with our users, we will make it easier for individuals and businesses to understand their rights and obligations and to have an overview of their own information.

The users will experience the Norwegian Tax Administration as predictable. They will largely serve themselves, but when they need help, they will meet a solution-oriented and efficient administration that seeks to solve matters at first contact.

We will make sweeping changes in our approach to collection. This work will affect the entire Tax Administration and facilitate new forms of dialogue with our users, new working methods and system adaptations. When developing new services beyond collection, we will be particularly attentive towards the needs of businesses. Our ambition is to be present in businesses’ own processes and systems.

At the same time as making it easier to do the right thing, it will also be more difficult to make mistakes. We will achieve this by integrating compliance in our systems, influencing behaviour and conducting accurate audits. We will motivate our users to make the right choices and we will identify mistakes and evasions.

We will strengthen our knowledge of how we influence users to do what is right. We will know how to build cohesive services and support life events that affect taxation and compliance. We will understand how changes around us, such as new business models and the work with the UN’s sustainable development goals, affect businesses and society. We will have sufficient expertise to be able to address developments that affect tax revenues and the public’s trust in the Norwegian Tax Administration, so that we can start the process of change early enough.

We will collaborate with others to prevent tax crime and ensure more immediate consequences

Failure to comply with tax regulations undermines trust in the tax system and has major negative consequences for the financing of the public sector. We will strengthen the fight against tax crime and work to create zero tolerance in society.

We will focus and streamline our efforts by working risk-based to collect, compile and analyse data. Our information base is the foundation for enabling us to monitor development, exchange data and use the correct tools as soon as possible in the value chain.

We will make use of the expertise, opportunities and sanction options that cooperation with others provides. We will respond quicker, both when we evaluate, prepare and carry out cases.

We will cooperate internationally to prevent cross-border tax crime, as well as create a common understanding of how this type of crime can be prevented.

We will acquire more knowledge about how tax crime arises in a digitalised and globalised world and actively use this knowledge to reduce the criminals’ room to manoeuvre.

We will manage our information so that it contributes to simplification and digitalisation

Reliable information about every resident in Norway and what they own is a prerequisite for us to correctly exercise our authority and deliver efficient and user- oriented services.

The Norwegian Tax Administration will collect and manage this information in a way that best enables us to fulfil our social mandate. We will ensure that this data contributes to simplifying and digitalising the Tax Administration, and that it can also be used in the rest of society.

We will strengthen the National Population Register’s role as Norway’s ID register. The National Population Register will meet society’s need for identifying people.

To secure the tax base, we will work to improve information about transactions and assets. We will also contribute to developing international standards for the management of information.

By using data from others, we will help ensure that individuals and businesses do not have to provide information to the public sector more than once.

The Norwegian Tax Administration’s data will be reliable and available, not just for us, but also for individuals, the public sector and businesses. We will maintain trust by processing our data in a way that society perceives as safe and legitimate. We protect privacy through transparency about what data we have, about the individual user and what we use it for.

The Norwegian Tax Administration will have knowledge about what data is found in society and the processes in which it is included. We will build expertise about how information can be used in new ways to create value in our processes and for others. We will develop expertise in international standards and how they are designed, as well as national and international solutions within good ID management.

We will work together from the start for faster results

It is when we work together as one administration that we create the momentum to achieve our goals and ensure that all considerations are taken into account. By using agile methodologies and collaborating across disciplines and organisational boundaries, we will create faster results for our users and ourselves.

We should be humble and acknowledge that the Tax Administration does not always know best, and we should work together with users and the private and public sectors when solving challenges. By user testing early in the development process, we will ensure that we continue with the correct initiatives and stop those that do not succeed.

Our work will increasingly be product oriented, based on the services we deliver to society, such as the tax assessment and the National Population Register. We will change to ensure that our products have value for users and can be quickly adapted to changing needs.

This requires that we adapt the way we manage operations and development in the administration. Our development and improvement will happen both through projects and day-to-day operations.

The changes the Norwegian Tax Administration face will require new expertise. We will have a good overview of the Tax Administration’s and employee’s need for expertise, and we will strengthen our investment in joint expertise development so that managers and employees can carry out the work tasks of the future. We will learn and share our experiences and give and receive feedback so that we create results faster. Learning and development will largely occur through task solving, interdisciplinary collaboration and in new roles. Using the opportunities that lie in taking on new tasks and learning together with others will be central to our culture.

We will use data, analyses and machine learning on a large scale in task solving

The Norwegian Tax Administration will make use of the full potential of digitalisation. We will use machine learning and predictions based on large-scale data as a natural part of task solving to offer new services and automate and simplify tasks. Increased use of data gives us insight into making better decisions in case processing and other operations.

The Norwegian Tax Administration will strengthen the work of developing and using predictive models. This places high demands on our ability to manage data. We must also monitor the logic the machines follow so that it functions appropriately and in accordance with our values. Interdisciplinary collaboration between analytical groups and other disciplinary groups is a prerequisite for accurate and usable models.

We will make use of the opportunities in the current regulations, and actively work so that the regulations become more digital friendly.

Increased use of technology means that work tasks will change for many in the Norwegian Tax Administration. Case processing will be automated to a greater extent and use digital decision-making support. Even if we have gradually fewer employees, data and machine learning will not replace people, but free-up resources for tasks that require expertise that machines do not have. Our employees will acquire new expertise and learn new tools to use data in their everyday work lives.

We will act when we gain new insights, even when it challenges our usual perceptions and work methods. We will build knowledge about data science and what influences the user’s actions. The knowledge we rely on will to a greater extent be quantifiable and verifiable. We will have expertise about the quality of our data and how we will work to improve it.

Understand more

The Norwegian Tax Administration’s strategy sets the direction for the administration’s development in the coming years. It is based on our social mandate and sets out how we can fulfil this in the years to come in a world characterised by rapid changes and complexity.

The Norwegian Tax Administration’s strategy is comprised of five strategic ambitions. We will pursue these ambitions both in our day-to-day and long-term management of the administration. In addition, we have described what this means for managers and employees in the Norwegian Tax Administration (NTA) in their work to achieve our strategic ambitions.

We have chosen not to set an exact duration for the strategy. The strategy will apply as long as the ambitions it is based on are valid, and it will guide our priorities and direction.

Our users and partners should notice the effects of the NTA’s strategy. We must interact with businesses and individuals in a way that makes it easier to do what is right and harder to make mistakes. We will collaborate with others to prevent tax crime and ensure more immediate consequences. We will manage our information so that it contributes to simplification and digitalisation, both for ourselves and in society in general.

Creating the tax administration of the future requires new ways of working. To be successful, we must work together from the start to achieve faster results. We will use data, analyses and machine learning on a large scale in our task solving.

Engaged and proficient employees are essential to the success of the strategy and the changes we face.

We are each other’s work environment, and our actions and behaviour contribute to our community. Expertise for the future, trust-based management and employees who make use of their opportunities are key prerequisites for fulfilling our ambitions.

I hope this strategy will inspire and motivate change so that the Tax Administration continues to deliver high-quality services and maintain the trust we enjoy in society.

Nina Schanke Funnemark, Director General

We expect the following developments in particular will affect society, and therefore the Tax Administration, in the time ahead:

The users expect customised and coherent services. To maintain a high level of trust, it is crucial that the public sector delivers services based on new technology that is customised to the user’s context and needs.

Working life is being restructured, with more people without a permanent workplace and facing changing expertise requirements. The platform economy is changing the existing structure of the labour market, and the share of self-employed persons and freelancers is expected to increase.

Globalisation puts the national tax systems under pressure and requires cooperation on regulations and systems. The increased flow of goods, services, capital and people across national borders challenges the tax systems that have a national perspective.

Digitalisation accelerates the pace of change. New technology is creating value in new ways, and the flow of money can be more difficult to trace. Digitalisation also contributes to creating new forms of criminal activity.

A sustainable development will require contributions fromallareasofsociety.The sharing and circular economies will change the framework conditions for economic activity and value creation, both nationally and internationally.

Public sector budgets are becoming tighter, partly due to the aging population. Ensuring the sustainability of the social welfare society – socially, climatically and economically – will require hard priorities.

An outside world characterised by rapid changes and complexity places high demands on our ability to adapt.

The Norwegian Tax Administration ensures income for the public sector through the correct and effective assessment and collection of taxes and duties determined by the Norwegian Parliament. We are responsible for the collection of several other public claims, as well as the administration of the National Population Register.

Businesses and individuals enjoy a high level of trust in the tax system because they experience equal treatment and predictability. Those who do not follow the rules are exposed, and there are visible consequences. The Norwegian Tax Administration’s employees are proud to facilitate a better Norwegian society, to solve problems on behalf of the community and to fight a threat that can endanger the State’s revenues.

The Norwegian Tax Administration is present when individuals and businesses need it. Our services are part of a coherent and comprehensive public service offering. User-oriented regulations designed for digital services facilitate the safeguarding of users’ rights and opportunities.

Data is reused across public sectors so that users do not need to provide information more than once. The Norwegian Tax Administration processes data in a way that society perceives as legitimate and transparent.

Even though very much happens automatically, both individuals and businesses sometimes need to contact the Tax Administration. Then they will meet a solution-oriented and efficient administration with an effective flow of information across communication channels and disciplines.

Tax is built into the businesses’ systems, and the Norwegian Tax Administration provides businesses with insight and decision-making support by sharing relevant information. New business models have led to new user needs for which the Norwegian Tax Administration has adapted its products. By using systems that ensure compliance to a greater extent, legitimate actors actively contribute to combating tax crime.

The Norwegian Tax Administration is a key entity in the fight against economic crime. Criminality is increasingly cross-border and complex. The Norwegian Tax Administration has promoted the use of digital identity solutions to prevent ID theft and economic crime.

The NTA is an active participant in the functioning of the international tax system. We participate in the community that ensures correct taxation across borders.

Since the simple tasks are automated, both managers and employees have been given new and more challenging tasks. The number of the administration’s employees who work on traditional tasks have gradually been reduced. Through interdisciplinary teams that quickly test solutions together with the users, employees continually gain new competencies in time to solve new tasks. Cross-discipline cooperation from the start is part of the administration’s culture. We think in new ways together with others, both nationally and internationally.

Engaged and proficient employees are essential to the success of the strategy and the changes we face. We are each other’s work environment, and our actions and behaviour contribute to our community. Expertise for the future, trust-based management and employees who make use of their opportunities are key prerequisites for fulfilling our strategy’s ambitions.

Management based on trust that facilitates collaboration, tempo and follow-through

As a manager, I communicate our direction clearly and highlight the big picture and its connections by building upon examples that people recognise themselves in. I create confidence and motivation for change and facilitate that expertise is developed and used where it is needed.

I will set overall frameworks and common goals so that employees can act independently and make quick and good decisions. Depending on the context and the task’s complexity, I will facilitate cooperation from the start by planning and solving tasks jointly.

I will trust the employees and delegate tasks. I am curious about my surroundings and challenge my own perceptions. I create open discussions, encourage diversity and questioning dialogue.

Employees that take responsibility and make use of their opportunities together with others

As an employee in the Tax Administration, I take responsibility to lead and motivate myself to reach my desired goals. I make use of my opportunities and see my role and my tasks in the bigger picture. I understand how digitalisation can affect task solving, and I use the opportunities to create an effective working day. I dare to challenge established truths to create improvements and more efficient processes.

I am curious and take responsibility for developing my expertise with a starting point in the users’ needs, including outside my own discipline. I use my expertise in other areas of the administration and use this as an opportunity for learning. I dare to challenge, and I give and receive feedback, even when my work is not entirely finished. I ask for help when I need it, and I collaborate with others so that we can help each other to be better.

Documents

You may choose to download the strategy as a PDF document:

English (PDF)

Norwegian (PDF)

Social mandate

The Norwegian Tax Administration ensures the financing of our public services

All taxpayers and declarants comply with the rules relating to taxes and duties.

The Norwegian Tax Administration ensures users access to register data and high-quality information

We instil and maintain the public’s trust in the Norwegian Tax Administration.

The Norwegian Tax Administration’s strategy