Someone offers you a cut for sending a customer their way. A shop pays you per sale on a tracked link. A friend's employer hands you a finder's fee for a candidate who got hired. All three are ordinary in Norway, and all three raise the same question before anything else: under what status are you allowed to take that money, and what do you owe once you have taken it? This guide walks the Norwegian answer, threshold by threshold, and along the way explains a small daily income from an app such as I am Beezy sits in exactly the same tax picture.
What Norway actually counts as a commission
The word covers several arrangements that behave identically once they reach Skatteetaten. The tax administration does not classify by the label on the invoice; it classifies by what you did and how often you did it.
Referral fees, affiliate links and finder's fees
An affiliate link that pays per click or per purchase, a one-off referral fee from a local tradesperson, a percentage on an insurance policy you introduced, a bounty for a hired candidate: each is a payment received for putting a buyer and a seller together. None of them is a gift, and none of them is exempt because it arrived through a payment app rather than a payslip.
Why "I only passed on a name" changes nothing
Norwegian tax law taxes the income, not the effort behind it. The fact that the work took ten minutes does not make it invisible. What the size and rhythm of the activity do change is the status it falls under, and that distinction is worth more to you than any attempt to argue the money away.
The one case that genuinely is exempt
Skatteetaten allows a household to pay up to 6 000 kroner per person per calendar year, entirely free of tax, for small jobs attached to the payer's home or holiday cabin. That exemption is written for garden work and painting, not for brokerage, and it comes with three conditions: you act as a private individual, the work is tied to the payer's home or hytta, and the payer engages you as a private individual. This figure comes from a Skatteetaten press release dated 13 December 2023; check it on skatteetaten.no before relying on it, because the source does not carry a 2026 date.
Hobby or business: which four tests does Skatteetaten apply?
This is the fork that decides everything downstream, and Norway resolves it with criteria rather than with an amount.
The four conditions, in the tax administration's own words
On its page "Er jeg næringsdrivende?", Skatteetaten sets out four conditions that must all be met for an activity to be næringsvirksomhet: the activity must be capable of running at a profit ("egnet til å gå med overskudd"), it must have a certain duration ("en viss varighet"), it must have a certain scope ("et visst omfang"), and it must be run for your own account and risk ("for egen regning og risiko"). The same page states that profitability is normally assessed over a horizon of five to eight years, exceptionally ten (skatteetaten.no, consulted 12 August 2026).
There is no kroner threshold for this question
Skatteetaten writes explicitly that the 50 000 kroner figure people quote is a VAT registration threshold and has nothing to do with whether you are a business. That single sentence corrects the most common Norwegian misunderstanding about side income. A single referral fee of 80 000 kroner can stay outside næringsvirksomhet if it was genuinely a one-off; a stream of 15 000 kroner in small commissions, repeated month after month, can fall inside it.
What crosses over when you become næringsdrivende
Three things change at once. You register an enkeltpersonforetak and receive an organisation number, which you handle through Altinn with BankID. Your income is reported as næringsinntekt rather than salary. And the social contribution rate changes: for the 2026 income year the trygdeavgift is 7,6 % on salary but 10,8 % on self-employed income, and 5,1 % on pensions, under the Storting's decision of 18 December 2025 no. 2748. That gap of 3,2 percentage points is the price of the status, and it is worth knowing before you choose it rather than after.
Four Norwegian thresholds that answer four different questions
Most bad advice about side income in Norway comes from treating these as one number. They are not interchangeable, and each one triggers a different obligation.
Read the table by the question, not by the amount
| Amount | What it actually governs | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 6 000 kroner per person, per year | Tax-free pay for small jobs at a private home or cabin. Not a brokerage allowance. | Skatteetaten, 13.12.2023 |
| 50 000 kroner over twelve months | Compulsory registration in the VAT register. Nothing to do with income tax. | merverdiavgiftsloven § 2-1 |
| 100 000 kroner per year | The frikort ceiling: below it, no income tax is due. | Skatteetaten, frikort page |
| 234 821 kroner per year | Income above which Lånekassen reduces the grant conversion of a student loan. | Lånekassen, 2026 |
The frikort and the law behind it
Skatteetaten states that if you earn 100 000 kroner or less in a year you pay no tax, and the legal anchor sits in folketrygdloven § 23-3, which provides that no contribution is payable where income is up to 99 650 kroner, with the charge capped at 25 % of the excess above that. The frikort is electronic, issued automatically from the age of 13, and collected by the employer rather than sent to you. With several payers, the amount has to be split between them.
Where VAT enters
Once your taxable turnover passes 50 000 kroner in a twelve-month period you must register, and from that point you add Norwegian VAT to your invoices: 25 % as the general rate, 15 % on food, 12 % on passenger transport, hotels, cinema, museums and sporting events, under the Storting's VAT decision of 18 December 2025 no. 2752. Commission on a service is not food and not transport, so plan for the general rate.
Bridging a slow start with I am Beezy
Commission income has a rhythm problem: the work happens now and the payment lands later, sometimes a quarter later, and in the meantime the rent does not wait. I am Beezy fills part of that gap on a completely different basis, and one that involves no brokerage at all: you open the app, you consult what is in it — videos, articles, advertising — each view is credited to you, and the total goes to the payment method you already use in Norway.
What order of magnitude to expect
Across our audience, the figure to hold in mind is 5 to 15 euros a day. There is no published krone equivalent for it, so use it as an order of magnitude rather than a promise, and convert at the day's rate: the European Central Bank reference rate stood at 1 EUR = 10,9750 NOK on 7 August 2026, and since the krone floats freely, that ratio will already have moved.
Why it sits in the same tax box
Income from an app is income like any other under Norwegian rules, and it counts towards the same 100 000 kroner frikort ceiling as a commission or a summer wage. There is no separate category for it, which is convenient: one ceiling to watch, not two.
Do you have to label the link before you earn on it?
Yes, and this is the part of the Norwegian answer that people discover late, usually after a complaint. The obligation is separate from tax and it applies even when you have earned nothing yet.
What the Marketing Act requires
Forbrukertilsynet, the Norwegian Consumer Authority, supervises this under markedsføringsloven § 8, first paragraph: a commercial practice is misleading if it does not make its commercial purpose clear where that purpose is not already obvious from the context. Its guidance on advertising in social media is direct about affiliate arrangements — using ad links that pay per click or per purchase means all exposure or mention that can drive traffic through those links is advertising too.
The words that are not accepted
The authority's guidance says it does not recommend terms such as "sponset", "i samarbeid med", "affiliatelenke" or "anbefaling for", and that English markers like "ad" or "adlinks" are not clear enough when the content itself is in Norwegian. Forbrukertilsynet also states that its assessment is stricter where many followers are minors or where children can easily see or hear the post.
Who carries the liability
The guidance is explicit that the advertiser holds the main responsibility for a breach, while the person publishing the content and the networks or agencies involved can be held liable as contributors. Practically, that means a contract that promises you a commission does not transfer the labelling duty away from you.
| Before the first payment | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Decide hobby or næringsvirksomhet against the four tests | It sets your reporting route and your contribution rate |
| Mark the link clearly, in Norwegian, at the top of the content | markedsføringsloven § 8 applies from the first post |
| Track cumulative turnover against 50 000 kroner | VAT registration is compulsory, not optional |
| Keep every payment statement and contract | Skatteetaten assesses scope and duration over years |
Getting paid, and keeping the paperwork straight
Norway makes the collection side easy and the record side unforgiving. Plan for both.
The access keys you need first
Without BankID you cannot open a Norwegian bank in practice, nor skatteetaten.no, nav.no or altinn.no. Money itself moves the Norwegian way: Vipps had 4,6 million users in Norway on 30 May 2025 for a population of 5 633 770 at the end of the first quarter of 2026, the national BankAxept scheme carried 49 % of card payments in 2024, and only 2 % of people surveyed in spring 2025 had paid cash at their last purchase in a shop. A commission paid in cash is an outlier in this country, and an untraceable one.
The dates that structure the year
The skattemelding reaches everyone who receives salary, pension or disability benefit in March or April, and the filing deadline is 30 April. The first autumn tax settlement falls on 12 August. If you end up paying advance tax as a self-employed person, the instalments are due on 15 September and 15 December.
What to keep, and for how long
Keep the agreement that sets the commission rate, every payment statement, and a simple log of dates and amounts. Duration and scope are assessed over years, so a record that only covers the current one leaves you arguing from memory. If you decide to keep the activity small and occasional on purpose, write down that intention too.
What to do this week
Place yourself against the four tests before you sign anything, and write the answer down in one sentence. Whether the arrangement is one-off or recurring decides your status far more than the amount does.
The three checks that take an evening
Mark your links from the first post, in plain Norwegian, at the top of the content. Track your cumulative income against the 100 000 kroner frikort ceiling. Track your turnover separately against the 50 000 kroner VAT line, because the two counters run independently and cross at different moments.
Where to verify each figure yourself
Every number in this guide has a public home: the frikort and the small-jobs exemption on skatteetaten.no, the VAT threshold in merverdiavgiftsloven § 2-1 on lovdata.no, the contribution rates in the Storting's annual decision, the student income ceiling on lanekassen.no, and the marking rules on forbrukertilsynet.no. Amounts are revised, usually in December for the year ahead, so open the source rather than a summary when the stake is real. And if you want a second, steadier stream while the commissions arrive on their own schedule, I am Beezy pays you for content you consult and lands in the same tax box, which keeps your year simple to count.
