Country guide · Norway

Norway has two mileage documents, and only one of them can be an app you installed yourself

Two documents, one subject

Most Norwegian advice about mileage is about one of two things and rarely says which.

• The reiseregning, the travel claim — the document that legitimates a tax-free kilometre allowance, with its content set by skattebetalingsforskriften § 5-6-12 ellevte ledd.
• The kjørebok, a running record of the car's use, which Skatteetaten describes in its Skatte-ABC — and whose electronic form, B-5-4.2, carries two conditions most apps cannot meet.

They overlap enough to look interchangeable. They are not, and the second one is where people get surprised.

What the reiseregning must contain

§ 5-6-12 ellevte ledd, verbatim in its own terms:

• "arbeidstakerens navn og adresse og underskrift"
• "dato for avreise og hjemkomst for hver yrkes- eller tjenestereise"
• "formålet med reisen"
• "hvilke arrangement arbeidstakeren har deltatt på"
• "fremstilling av reiseruten med angivelse av utgangs- og endepunkt, lokal kjøring på oppdragsstedet og årsaken til eventuelle omkjøringer"
• "totalt utkjørt distanse"
• "navn på passasjer det kreves passasjertillegg for"

The regulation names GPS itself, which is unusual: the total distance may be "beregnet på grunnlag av bilens kilometerteller, GPS-basert elektronisk kjørebok eller nettbasert kartprogram". Electronic records are not tolerated here, they are contemplated.

Norway is the country that wants the passenger's name

1 kr/km per passenger, on top of the 3,50 base — and unlike Austria, Finland and the United Kingdom, which also pay a passenger supplement, Norway asks for the name. Those three put a number on the money; Norway puts a name on the document.

It also needs no employer scheme. Takseringsreglene § 1-3-20 gives the self-employed the same words: "Har skattepliktige har hatt med passasjerer, økes satsene ovenfor med kr 1,00 per km per passasjer." The 1 kr/km for a trailer or equipment, and the 1 kr/km for forest and construction roads, are real too — and neither is something an app can observe.

The kjørebok is a route no app you installed yourself can serve

Skatte-ABC B-5-4.2, on the electronic kjørebok:

> "Skattyter kan også benytte en GPS-basert elektronisk kjørebok. Denne skal registrere faktisk kjørt distanse, dato og klokkeslett. Kjøreboken skal ikke gi mulighet for å rette eller slette disse opplysningene. … For lønnstaker skal den elektroniske kjøreboken anskaffes og administreres av arbeidsgiver."

Two conditions, and they are about the software rather than about the driving. The prohibition is on the capability: a log that makes a change visible is not a log that prevents one, and any app whose trips you can delete fails the slette half outright. And for an employee the kjørebok must be acquired and administered by the employer, which a personally installed app is not, whatever it records.

The scope is narrower than it first reads. The no-edit rule covers distance, date and time only — the purpose field is meant to be written by the driver. And B-5-4.1 says the whole thing is optional: "Skattyter har ikke plikt til å føre kjørebok. Skattemyndighetene kan heller ikke pålegge skattyter dette." Nobody is obliged to keep one. It is a route a Norwegian may take, and the reiseregning is the other one.

What the kjørebok asks for, if you keep one

B-5-4.1: it must "fortløpende og daglig registrere bruken av bilen i yrket", and "angi utgangspunktet for dagens kjøring, hvilket firma, byggeplass eller lignende som er besøkt, hvor kjøringen avsluttes og kjørelengden ifølge kilometertelleren". The odometer is read at least monthly, not per trip. The purpose must be konkret og etterprøvbart, and Skatteetaten's own example is «Kundebesøk hos Olsen Bygg AS, Drammen» — who was visited is part of the purpose, not optional colour.

Five years, not the ten still published

Bokføringsloven § 13 annet ledd: five years after the end of the accounting year, the kjørebok and the reiseregning being dokumentasjon av bokførte opplysninger.

Skatteetaten's own kjørebok ruling — the prinsipputtalelse Bruk av arbeidsgivers bil – krav til dokumentasjon of 12 December 2010 — still says "den skal oppbevares i 10 år etter regnskapsårets slutt". The classification it establishes holds; the number is pre-2014, and Skatteetaten's own announcement dates the change: the reduction to five years took effect on 1 February 2014. Anyone quoting that page verbatim doubles the period.

A wage earner has no bokføringsplikt and therefore no period of their own; their floor is the five-year change window of skatteforvaltningsloven § 12-6.

What failure costs

The trekkfrie part of the allowance — 3,50 of the 5,30 kr/km — becomes taxable.

Why an app rather than a notebook

Nothing above requires software, and one of the two documents is one software of this kind cannot be. What an app changes is the reiseregning, where the loss is never the distance: it is the reason for a detour on a Thursday in June, the exact point you set off from, and the name of the colleague you carried and claimed 1 kr/km for.

DriveHub records each drive in the background and asks afterwards which were work. The report carries the ellevte ledd list — your name and address, the departure and return dates, the purpose in your own words, the route with its start and end points and your note on any detour, the total distance, and the passengers by name, which is asked on the trip screen in Norway alone.

What it is, stated plainly: a reiseregning, not the electronic kjørebok. That route needs a log nobody can correct or delete, and for an employee one the employer provides. Nobody is obliged to keep one.

This page states what the forskrift and Skatte-ABC say, and names the ledd so you can check. It is not tax advice. It can't account for your circumstances. Where money is involved, ask your regnskapsfører — and bring the reiseregning.