The first million declaration notices have now been sent to Danish homeowners, making it easier for them to understand the assessments that property tax is based on. According to the Assessment Agency, this is an important step towards getting all the 2020 assessments to homeowners. These assessments, unlike the highly debated 2022 assessments, focus on evaluating whether homeowners have paid too much or too little in taxes between 2011 and 2020. Anne-Sofie Jensen, director of the Assessment Agency, states that with the dispatch of a million declarations, they are on the right track to get the 2020 assessments out by 2024. The declaration notices include the calculations that make up the tax base: BBR information, sales prices, geographical data such as distance to nature and infrastructure, and municipal planning basis.
The Assessment Agency aims for the 2020 assessments to ensure that the new assessments are more accurate. “This is good news for homeowners, who can look forward to more consistent and fair assessments as well as a solid basis for their property taxes,” says Anne-Sofie Jensen. The need for improvements is evident, as the preliminary 2022 assessments, sent out in September 2023, have proven to be inaccurate in several cases. For example, some newly built houses were assessed too high in relation to their actual value, and some assessments have been extreme, such as a summer house plot that increased from an annual payment of 2330 kroner to 165,558 kroner, or a homeowner on the outskirts of Roskilde who was mistakenly charged for neighbors’ plots.
With the new declaration notices, it will be easier for homeowners to understand why the assessments are as they are, and therefore also easier to identify and correct errors. Anne-Sofie Jensen expresses joy that the Assessment Agency is now well underway with their core task: ensuring homeowners receive high-quality property assessments that are both consistent and transparent. “The declaration notices are one of the cornerstones of the new assessment system, as they provide homeowners with insight into the data basis for the assessment and the opportunity to raise objections,” she concludes.