Every January, HR teams plan cafeteria budgets. More and more companies want health insurance in the mix – rightly so, it fits well. But a few rules are worth seeing clearly.
Can it go into the cafeteria scheme?
Yes: group health insurance can be provided as a cafeteria element. The favourable 33.04% payer-side taxation is retained only if the arrangement is genuinely group-based in substance: enrolment is not an individual decision, the tiers are tied to objective criteria, and the per-person premium cannot be clearly attributed to individual colleagues even by apportionment. The classification is decided by the Personal Income Tax Act and the tax authority's (NAV) practice, not by the group-contract form under the Civil Code alone.
The trap is the same as elsewhere
Cafeteria systems are built on individual choices – but group insurance is group insurance precisely because individuals do not pick and choose. If employees individually opt in and select packages inside the cafeteria system, you quickly get the collective umbrella situation, and the benefit is taxed as salary. The clean solution: the insurance appears in the cafeteria policy at group level, by objective criteria (e.g. the base tier for all employees), not as an individual option.
Fitting the budget logic
- Base part + elective part: health insurance sits in the base (for everyone); the elective budget goes to other elements.
- Tier differentiation by role: that is an objective criterion, not an individual choice – it works.
- Family members: typically at a discounted premium paid by the employee, outside the budget.
What to do in January
Cafeteria planning is the best timing to introduce or review health insurance: the full benefits budget is visible at once. In a 20-minute consultation we can look at what tier fits your planned budget – and how it can be embedded compliantly. Tax details in our taxation article.
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