The Norwegian Parliament has approved new tax legislation, backdated to 1 January 2004, which exempts from Norwegian withholding tax dividend payments made to EU and EEA corporate shareholders. Private individuals and corporate shareholders outside EU and EEA do not qualify for this exemption.
“The change will apply to dividends paid in 2004 for the fiscal year 2003,” explains a DnB NOR spokesman in Oslo. “The tax authorities have not specified how the reclaims will be handled. However, we assume that it will be a reclaim process as per today. Currently, no standard tax reclaim forms exist in Norway and the Norwegian tax authorities have very limited staff to process the documentation.
We are arranging a meeting with the Norwegian Directorate of Taxes in order to obtain further clarification and details.”