By Elio Mondello — Founder, Mondosol
Published 10 September 2026 · Last updated 10 September 2026
Summary
If you work in Norway without a tax deduction card, the Norwegian Tax Administration withholds 50 percent of your earnings. That is not a punishment. It is simply what happens by default, and you cannot get a tax card without a Norwegian identity number, which you cannot get without attending an in-person ID check. Norway runs on this number: your bank account, your salary, your GP, your rental contract and your phone subscription all sit behind it. This article explains the two numbers Norway issues — the temporary D-number and the permanent fodselsnummer — the single most counterintuitive rule about how you get one, exactly what to bring to the appointment, and the order to do things in so you are not stuck for weeks. It is written with people arriving from outside the EU and EEA in mind, where the paperwork is heaviest.
Two numbers, and they are not interchangeable
Norway issues two kinds of eleven-digit personal identity number, and confusing them causes a great deal of wasted time.
The fodselsnummer, the national identity number, is the permanent one. You get it if you are registered as resident in Norway, which broadly means you are staying for six months or more and meet the conditions for residence registration. It is the number that unlocks everything without argument.
The D-number is temporary. It exists for people who need to interact with Norwegian systems but are not registered residents: someone working in Norway for a few months, an asylum seeker, a foreign citizen holding a board position in a Norwegian company, or someone staying longer than six months who does not meet the conditions for a national identity number. It is a real, usable number, and it is often the first one you will hold.
The two are linked rather than parallel. If you later become a registered resident, you are assigned a national identity number and your D-number is inactivated. You do not keep both in active use. Plan for the transition rather than assuming your D-number is permanent.
You cannot apply for a D-number, and this catches almost everybody
Here is the rule that surprises people most, so I will state it plainly: you cannot apply for a D-number yourself.
A D-number is requested on your behalf by an enterprise or a public authority that needs you to have a Norwegian identification number. In practice that is usually your employer, applying for your tax deduction card. It can also be a bank, a public body, or another organisation with a legitimate need.
This has a practical consequence that reorders your whole arrival plan. If you land in Norway intending to walk into a tax office and request a number so that you can then look for work, you have the sequence backwards. In the ordinary case the job or the formal engagement comes first, and the number follows from it. If nobody has requested a number for you, there is nothing for the tax office to process.
So the first practical question on arrival is not “how do I get my number” but “who is requesting it for me, and have they actually done it.” Ask your employer directly, and ask for confirmation rather than reassurance.
The ID check: what actually happens, and what to bring
Once a number has been requested for you, you must confirm your identity in person. This is the ID check, and it is short — expect around fifteen minutes — but it must be booked online in advance and you must physically attend.
You can do it at a tax office, or at a Service Centre for Foreign Workers (SUA), which exist in Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim and Kirkenes. The service centres put the tax administration, the police and the Labour Inspection Authority under one roof, which is why they are usually the better choice if you are near one.
Bring the following, and check each item the night before:
- A valid travel-document-grade ID. A passport, or a national ID card approved as a travel document within the Schengen area. It must carry a photograph and state your nationality and gender. A driving licence or a residence card alone is not enough.
- Form RF-1209, “Application for tax deduction card for foreign citizens,” completed before you arrive rather than in the waiting room.
- Your employment contract, or written confirmation of the work you will be doing in Norway. It must be a document, not a verbal offer.
- Your residence permit, if you are a citizen of a country outside the EU and EEA. This is the step that does not apply to European arrivals and that is therefore missing from most advice written for them.
- Your address in Norway, with a tenancy contract if you have one. You will need it shortly afterwards for the bank in any case.
In most cases the number arrives by post afterwards. Sometimes it is given to you in person during the check. Either way, do not assume the process is complete until you have the number in writing.
The fifty percent problem
It is worth being concrete about the cost of getting this wrong, because the number is unusually harsh.
If you do not attend the ID check, you are not assigned a D-number. Without a D-number, no tax deduction card is issued for the tax year. And without a tax deduction card, the Tax Administration applies 50 percent withholding to earnings attributable to your work in Norway.
You are not losing that money permanently — it is withholding, and it is reconciled later — but half your salary disappearing during exactly the months when you are paying a deposit, buying winter clothes and living on savings is a serious problem. For someone who has moved from a country with a much lower cost base and arrived with limited reserves, it is the difference between managing and not managing.
Treat the ID-check appointment as the highest-priority item in your first weeks. It outranks almost everything else on your list.
Moving from a D-number to a fodselsnummer
If you stay, the temporary number has to become a permanent one. Once you have lived in Norway for six months, you report your move to Norway and apply to be registered as resident, which is what produces the fodselsnummer.
This is not automatic and nobody chases you about it. It is your responsibility to start it, and it matters more than it appears, because a surprising number of systems treat a D-number as second-class. Which brings us to the part that frustrates people most.
The bank and BankID are the real bottleneck
To open a Norwegian bank account you need either a D-number or a fodselsnummer. Banks will also want a passport or national ID card with a chip, and proof of a Norwegian address such as a tenancy contract.
Then comes BankID, Norway’s electronic identity. BankID is not a banking convenience. It is the key to the country’s public and private digital infrastructure — logging into health services, tax, benefits, insurance, many employers’ systems and a great deal else. Life in Norway without it is genuinely difficult.
The awkward part: many banks will issue BankID on a D-number, but the access it gives can be narrower. Some public services and third-party platforms insist on a full national identity number and will refuse a D-number even when your bank accepts it. The broadest access reliably arrives only once you hold a fodselsnummer.
The lesson is not to avoid the D-number — you will almost certainly need it first. It is to avoid treating it as the finish line. Start the residence registration as soon as you qualify, rather than waiting until a blocked service forces you to.
What to do right now
In order, and the order matters.
- Confirm who is requesting your number. Ask your employer, in writing, whether they have applied for your tax deduction card and D-number, and ask them to confirm when it was submitted. Do not assume it has been done because someone said it would be.
- Book the ID-check appointment the moment you can. Slots are finite and the queue is the constraint, not the paperwork. Choose a Service Centre for Foreign Workers if you are near Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim or Kirkenes.
- Assemble the documents as a physical stack. Passport, completed RF-1209, employment contract, and residence permit if you are from outside the EU and EEA. Lay them out the night before. A missing document costs you the appointment, not just the item.
- Sort your address before the bank, not after. A tenancy contract in your name makes the bank conversation straightforward and is useful evidence at several other points.
- Open the bank account as soon as the number arrives, and ask that specific bank, before you commit, what level of BankID they issue on a D-number.
- Diarise the six-month mark. Put a reminder in your phone now for the date you become eligible to register as resident, and start the process then rather than months later.
None of this is intellectually difficult. It goes wrong because the sequence is not obvious, because the rule that you cannot request your own number is genuinely surprising, and because the cost of a missed appointment is far higher than it looks. Get the order right and the whole thing is a few weeks of administration. Get it wrong and it can shape your entire first year.
Sources
- Norwegian Tax Administration — D number
- Norwegian Tax Administration — Identification numbers in Norway
- Service Centre for Foreign Workers (SUA) — Booking an appointment, non-EU/EEA citizens
- Service Centre for Foreign Workers (SUA) — Checklist for EU/EEA workers
- Nordic Co-operation — Norwegian identification numbers
- Life in Norway — Norway’s D Number: What It Is and How To Get One
About the author: Elio Mondello is the founder of Mondosol, a platform that helps people from developing countries prepare for life in Norway — language, paperwork, and the networks that actually lead to work. This article is checked against the Norwegian Tax Administration and the Service Centre for Foreign Workers. Rules and forms change: it is general information, not legal or immigration advice, and you should confirm your own situation with Skatteetaten and UDI before acting.
