This disclosure describes techniques for performing sample adaptive offset signaling and coding in a video coding process. Techniques of the disclosure include both a merge-based and prediction-based signaling process for sample adaptive offset information (i.e., offset values and offset type). The techniques includes determining offset information for a current partition, comparing the offset information of the current partition with offset information of one or more neighbor partitions, coding a merge instruction in the case that the offset information of one of the one or more neighbor partitions is the same as the offset information of the current partition, and coding one of a plurality of prediction instructions in the case that the offset information of the one or more neighbor partitions is not the same as the offset information of the current partition.