Opinions This is a debate post. The post expresses the writer’s views.
We previously read in Bladet Vesterålen that “the rent has become so heavy to bear for so many hadselvärings that the finance manager in the municipality calls out for warning”. The number of people seeking social assistance, i.e. support for those who are unable to cover necessary expenses themselves, has doubled in Hadsel in two years. The animal age hurts the most for those who have the least from before.
The following day, in the municipal council on Thursday 25 April, Hadsel SV put forward a proposal to grant exemption from property tax to those who struggle most to pay it. We wanted to help the homeowners in Hadsel who have the lowest income and ability to pay. But we were downvoted. The majority believed that the time was wrong to make such a proposal.
We will be the first to admit that cutting property tax is not necessarily the most effective measure to help as many people as possible in these difficult times. The poorest rarely own their own house. Cuts in property tax are not typical SV policy either. We could propose things such as free kindergarten and after-school care, higher social assistance rates, higher child benefits and so on.
But it would certainly (feel free to disprove me) have been rejected by the majority in the municipal council. That’s why we focused on property tax, because we thought it could actually go through in a municipal council where the Conservatives, Liberals and MOS form a majority supported by the Frp and INP. That in any case we could help someone who really needs it now. Some are better than none. But the majority believed that the time was wrong to make such a proposal. They were also concerned that this would cost too much. Was it perhaps also the case that the proposal came from the wrong party?
Of course, you should be concerned about the price tag of things that are proposed. No one knows exactly how much this would have cost, until we had possibly implemented it. But in Eidsvoll municipality, which has over 27,000 inhabitants, between 15 and 20 households were exempted in the first year they had such an arrangement. If you take the average property tax in Hadsel as a starting point and say that as many as 40 households in Hadsel (which has just over 8,000 inhabitants) received tax exemptions, it would cost the municipality NOK 118,000 in lost income in the second half of 2024. Which is the period we proposed that this immediate measure should initially apply to.
In the municipal council last Thursday, we heard from Høyre representatives that the proposal was good, we just have to wait until December 2024 to propose it again. Eight months is a long time for someone who worries about their finances every day and night. When is it really appropriate for the majority in Hadsel’s municipal council to help those who badly need it today?
PS. In December last year, the majority passed an exemption from property tax for the owners of newly built homes. This year, NOK 250,000 has been prioritized for this measure and the amount will be stepped up every year until 2027. Then the tax relief for those who can afford to build new will mean NOK one million in lost income for the municipality. If the right really wanted to end the anti-social consequences of the property tax, there is little doubt that they started at the wrong end.
