18 February 2016 | Taxation
If you have received a letter this week from DIFI (who manage the electronic systems for Skatteetaten), you might think that your access to Altinn may be being limited significantly.
You would be right.
A copy of such a letter can be accessed here, by clicking this link.
What is happening is that Skatteetaten will delete contact details from Altinn where either the email address our the mobile phone number is shared with anyone else.
It is not clear if you share one of these details then only the shared detail will be deleted, our if all the contact details will be deleted in this case.
Skatteetaten now insist that the email address and the mobile number are exclusive to each taxpayer, and (apparently) for security reasons duplicates cannot be allowed.
If you asked us to create an account at Altinn, then we will have used our email addresses and our mobile numbers as the contact details. The mobile number shows us to get an access code rather than having to use the pin codes every time. It’s quicker and easier.
These will be deleted.
If you established your own account and provided us with the logon details then this should not affect you, unless we added our mobile number to the record.
We will reactivate your account using a new unique email address that we will have access to and we have one of our famed ‘cunning plans’ to prevent this happening again.
We could – of course – use your personal email address, but this just makes the submission of your tax returns more complex, although we are just holding this account on your behalf anyway.
We would love to get Agent access to your records which would avoid this problem arising, but Skatteetaten only allow Norwegians to get this access, and we have applied and been rebuffed.
Protectionism? Probably.
Helpful to non-resident taxpayers? You’re having a laugh.