The Arrangement of Deferred Taxes Descriptive study on the arrangement of deferred taxes and the influence on wages, employees and investments within chosen subgroups.

Abstract

This master thesis scheds light on the usage of deferred Value-Added tax in Norway while investigating whether the arrangement was effective. To analyse the effectiveness, we choose to look at changes in wages, employment and investments from the three years before COVID- 19. The data has been divided into different subgroups; sector, region and EBITDA percentiles, to research the variation within them. We do this by using data from the Norwegian Tax Administration conducting a propensity score matching, before doing a Difference-in-Difference analysis between companies deferring taxed and those that did not. Firms with deferrals increase with the rate of infection within the regions, but there is a small percentage of firms within each region that choose to defer their taxes. The same is observed for different sectors, more firms within the hardest-hit sectors have an arrangement of tax deferral but in total those firms account for a small percentage in each sector. Our findings show significant results for wages, and employment increasing by 7.47 and 7.68 percent after deferrals, hence implying effectiveness in non-laid off workers. A further assessment within the subgroups thus shows this significance is based on the most profitable firms in EBIDA, thought there were mostly non-profitable companies applying for deferrals. Implying the arrangement as a last resort.