Page 14 - Transforming Tax Administration and Involving Stakeholders

Digitalization opens possibilities to improve our internal processes in many respects, and to
remove many of their often self-inflicted complexities. These complexities are often with us
mainly for historic reasons.
However, in order to involve tax-payers actively in improving the processes, our focus of
attention must be shifted from our own processes to the processes of the tax-payer. Our
starting point has to be the "point of view" of the tax-payer, rather than the "point-of-view"
of the administration.

An employee may have a "point-of-view" on taxes and the tax administration as illustrated
above. The tax administration is just a small thing in a much larger context filled with other
content of far more importance to the tax-payer.
Rethinking tax collection
The Norwegian Tax Administration (NTA) has over many years simplified the tax process for
employees and pensioners by collecting digital information third parties and using this
information to produce a prefilled tax return. An important basis is a widespread use a
unique digital identifier for persons throughout the society combined with an extensive use
of information technology at relevant third parties. The person identifier was established in
the mid 1960s, and has been mandatory to use by public administration, employers, banks
etc for decades.

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