Taxes on freelance income transferred to an Indian bank account while working full time in Norway ?

@admins/Mods: Request you to move this topic to a better suited section than legal, as I could not find one.

On topic, I have been working full time in Norway and pay my taxes here.

My concern is, while I also work as a freelancer (without affecting my full time job) and earn some amount of money which I transfer to my savings bank account in India. So what is the procedure or recommended steps of action I must perform so that this income does not creates any issues or further liabilities for me or how do I take care of taxes that follow ?

I am sure many would suggest to just talk to a CA, but before I do that I need some expert and experienced advices on the forum.

Thank you.

 

As an option you can open an offshore account in another country and just pay less taxes. It's a common practice for all who works in freelance. I was a client of this company that helps to open offshore bank account and control all stages of the operations.

 

As a rule, when you live somewhere (and already pay taxes there), all income sources are taxed there as well. So in your case, your freelance income should be taxed in Norway as well. It does not really matter whether it is paid in a Norwegian bank account, Indian bank account or offshore bank account. From a legal point of view, it's your income and you are taxable in Norway. Therefore you must pay taxes on all of it in Norway.

You will see a lot of people online saying "create an offshore account" or even "an offshore company". While that may technically work short term, it is also technically illegal from the point of view of the Norwegian tax office.

What you are effectively doing is hiding revenue. Getting paid abroad doesn't mean you don't work from Norway. This is the issue. Of course you can choose not to declare your freelance income and hope the norwegian tax office never finds out, but you should be aware that most banks in the world are now part of the AEOI: Automatic Exchange of Information (you can Google the list of countries, but India is part of it since 2017).

This means that as long as your bank account in India is in your name, the bank may "automatically" forward this information to the Norwegian tax office who may then use the data to find this source of income. If your Indian bank account is registered in your name but with an Indian address, it is less likely but not impossible depending on their policies.

Hope this helps!

 

And you can at least find out how many times you can pay less. I understand that every country is different, but what if your case?