The Tax Directorate are checking commuter addresses

7 killed on the roads in MarchPeople in traffic. Photo Norway Today Media

The Tax Directorate are checking workers’ residential addresses in order to find foreign contractors who do not pay a commuter tax to their employees and ensure that they pay those taxes.

– We are tightening our controls of specified addresses in Norway, to ensure that the adress is a real home adress, not just a corporate office address,  director at the Tax Directorate, Hans Christian Holte, says to the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.

According to the newspaper, companies in the construction industry who employ foreign workers , have been able to exploit a loophole in that employees may report  to the National Registry that they have moved to the places where the projects are, so that they can not be defined as commuters.
This way the companies won’t have to pay their employees for board, lodging and for them travelling home, unlike  the Norwegian workers, who the companies have to pay for these things.

– We will now tighten our procedures in this area,  Holte says.
Construction companies, the Joint Union and the Labour Inspectorate all welcomes this measure.
– We are in favor of all measures that make it harder for those who want to exploit the rules to the detriment of workers to do so.

We are also in favor of any measure that makes it easier for us to enforce the rules,  director  of the Labour Inspectorate, Ingrid Finboe Svendsen,says.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today