The background is a suggestion from Rødt in the Storting on “limiting hidden ownership and ensuring increased transparency about tax and financial differences”. Rødt, SV, the Labor Party and the Center Party confirm to NTB that they support the proposal. Thus there is a majority in the Storting.
It was E24 who reported this first.
– The tax lists are public information that should be openly available to all Norwegian citizens. Transparency about the economy and inequality is a prerequisite for a vibrant democracy, says Rødt’s fiscal policy spokesperson Marie Sneve Martinussen to NTB.
– Absolutely crucial
Until the tax year 2013, anyone could search the tax lists anonymously and check other people’s income, assets and taxes. But this possibility was removed by the bourgeois government, which led to a sharp drop in the number of searches.
Today’s regulations mean that people can see who has applied for them in the tax lists. Now this is being changed again.
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– Transparency is absolutely essential for trust in our tax system. The Labor Party and the Center Party will therefore allow private individuals to once again apply anonymously in the tax lists. The Labor Party, the Center Party and SV voted against the Solberg government’s austerity measures in 2014. It was because, unlike the right, we were concerned with ensuring as much transparency as possible about how Norwegian tax policy works out for the individual, says Benjamin Jakobsen (Ap) to NTB.
– Less transparency
Jakobsen is the deputy for fiscal policy spokesperson Eigil Knutsen and sits on the finance committee at the Storting. He points out that 16.5 million searches were carried out in the tax lists in 2012, but that the figure was down to 1.6 million in 2021.
– This clearly shows that there has been less transparency around the tax lists with right-wing politics. We in the Labor Party want to do something about this, he says.
Fiscal policy spokesperson in the Center Party, Geir Pollestad, says that it is important to ensure a good balance between ensuring the greatest possible transparency and safeguarding privacy.
– A review of the regulations will help us achieve that balance in a good way, he says.
SV also stands behind the proposal.
– We were very critical of the tightening that the FRP did, a move we believe is unfortunate if the aim is to prevent tax adjustment and tax evasion. We are positive and believe it is right to open up the tax lists again, says SV’s fiscal policy spokesperson Kari Elisabeth Kaski.
It was Siv Jensen (Frp) who was finance minister when anonymous searches ended.
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Foreign ownership
There is also a majority in favor of a proposal to tighten the rules for transparency about foreign ownership in Norwegian companies, through the register of beneficial owners.
Today’s regulation, which recently came into force, stipulates that only owners who control more than 25 per cent of a company will be covered by the register.
– The proponents believe that this limit is set far too high for the register to provide precise information about very many important people, and that it appears easy to split up larger ownership items if you want to avoid registration, the proposal states.
The register of beneficial owners will open in 2023.
(© NTB)