Key role in simplification work
The Brønnøysund Register Centre has a key role in the efforts to make business and industry's relationship to the public sector as simple as possible. The Brønnøysund Register Centre was launched as a register system under the Ministry of Justice to keep track of responsibilities, roles and rights. The Register of the Reporting Obligations of Enterprises was established already in 1997 in response to a need to reduce business and industry's workload in connection with reporting and submitting statements. Something had to be done to reduce the amount of red tape. The main task of the Register of the Reporting Obligations of Enterprises is to keep an up-to-date overview of business and industry's reporting obligations in relation to the public authorities and to find opportunities for coordination and simplification. The goal is to prevent superfluous collection and registration of information, especially in relation to small and medium-sized enterprises. After the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities and the Register of the Reporting Obligations of Enterprises were established, the Brønnøysund Register Centre gradually went from merely being a register system to also becoming a simplification tool for business and industry. In 2001, the Brønnøysund Register Centre came under the administration of the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
As the body responsible for the joint Altinn portal, the Brønnøysund Register Centre makes information and forms available in one place. We are developing the Semantic Register for Electronic Collaboration (SERES) with a description of the data public agencies collect from businesses, in order to facilitate reuse and reduce the number of questions that have to be answered in each case. We are also responsible for the ELMER guidelines, which ensure that the forms that are still necessary are as simple as possible and have common, recognisable design features and online functionality. As a basis for this, the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities ensures that public agencies can cooperate and exchange data through the use of a joint organisation number.
In May 2011, a legislative amendment was introduced that allowed small limited liability companies to drop external auditing of their annual accounts. This is also a concrete simplification measure that gave more than 100,000 small Norwegian enterprises the opportunity to save an annual expense of around NOK 10-15,000. Many businesses take advantage of this option and drop an external audit of their annual accounts. Around 48,000 limited liability companies chose to take advantage of the option to drop an external audit of the annual accounts for 2011. More than 70 per cent of them chose to send notification electronically to the Register of Business Enterprises that they had decided to drop an external audit. Work also started on reviewing the capital requirements for establishing a limited liability company. From 1 January 2012, as a result of this work, the share capital required to form a limited liability company was reduced from NOK 100,000 to NOK 30,000.
These are examples of two simplification measures that directly affected business owners' financial situation, but during 2011, several other steps were taken to simplify the reporting obligation for businesses in Norway in the long run. In a press release issued in August, the Ministry of Trade and Industry stated that, between 1 January 2011 and 1 January 2016, enterprises' costs relating to following up reporting obligations imposed by the authorities are to be reduced by as much as NOK 10 billion.
This corresponds to a decrease of about 20% in relation to the current level. Around half the cuts will be made in the current parliamentary term. This is an ambitious goal, but the Brønnøysund Register Centre, in cooperation with other public agencies, is now preparing for this work. The government also launched enklereregler.no, the new simplification website, where businesses are encouraged to submit proposals for how obligatory reporting can be simplified. This is important feedback if we are to reach the goal of achieving a reduction in obligatory reporting corresponding to NOK 10 billion by the end of 2015.
At the end of 2011, the information portal in Altinn was also expanded, so that information on starting and running a business from several websites can be found in one place. This simplification measure makes it easier for people thinking about starting a business or who need more information and guidance on the running of their business to find their way around the information jungle. The information found in Altinn on these topics is up-to-date and quality-assured at all times by the information owners themselves.
The Act relating to the Register of Reporting Obligations of Enterprises celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2012. A great deal has been achieved, but there is still a lot to be done. Exciting plans are now being made in enthusiastic cooperation with small and large agencies to intensify the efforts to reduce the number of forms that need to be filled in and to make running a business easier.
