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Oslo
Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Little property tax relief in state budget

Even though Norway’s conservative government coalition opposes property tax, it didn’t do anything to prevent local governments from imposing it in the state budget. There is a proposal, however, to keep it from rising too quickly.

Residents of Oslo, for example, are getting hit with much higher property tax bills than expected because of higher property tax assesments based on higher real estate prices. Even though prices have begun to fall, there’s a two-year lag in the assessments used by the city.

The state government is proposing two measures to at least hinder property tax shocks: Local governments imposing property tax for the first time can only use a tax rate of 1 percent on taxable value, not 2 percent as it has been. Tax rates can also only rise by one percentage point from year to year, not two points.

Neither offers any relief for those hit by property tax in Oslo, where a new Labour-Greens-SV government first imposed it in 2016 at 2 percent and then hiked the rate to 3 percent, which amounted to a 50 percent increase.

The new state-regulated tax rates will apply to all property, both residential and commercial, but won’t take effect before 2019.

newsinenglish.no staff

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