Increases child benefit Free after-school hours for 2nd graders Halves electricity fees Higher taxes for people with expensive homes Weakens the BSU scheme Will investigate tax against deflagration Significant support for Ukraine More money for emergency services Will provide accommodation for church asylum seekers No new round of concessions for oil exploration before 2025 The governing parties and SV set aside NOK 440 million next year to adjust the price of child benefit. In addition, NOK 490 million is set aside to increase child benefit for single parents by NOK 5,000 a year from 1 March next year. – We are increasing the minimum pension, housing benefit, child benefit, support for the food centers and child allowances for those who receive employment verification allowance and unemployment benefit, or are in the qualification programme, says AP leader Jonas Gahr Støre. Child benefit increases for both single parents and couples. Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB The three parties agree to ensure 12 hours of free after-school care for 2nd graders as well. During last year’s negotiations with SV, 12 hours of free time were put in place in SFO for 1st graders all over Norway from this autumn. This saves an average family with one child in preschool about NOK 20,000 in 2023. – Where last year free half-day places for the first stage came into place. Now we are getting a free half-day place for the second stage, says SV leader Audun Lysbakken. – This is extra important now because there are huge expenses for the Støre family, says the government is also increasing the allowance for everyone who lives in an asylum reception center by 50 per cent. He says the focus is also on climate. – We are strengthening the green grant to keep the pressure on the climate up. We are increasing support for Enova and the climate rate by a total of one billion, and we are increasing support for voluntary forest protection and green shipping, says Støre. More people can be encouraged to use SFO when both 1st and 2nd graders get several hours of free SFO. Photo: NTB / NTB Sp leader and finance minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum promises to create financial security for people. One of the moves is to reduce people’s electricity expenses. – Then it is also in the budget here that from January we will almost halve electricity charges, says the finance minister. – We also have a tax system which means that 76 per cent of the population will receive the same or lower tax compared to this year when we enter 2023, says Vedum. He says one of the most important things for Sp in the budget agreement is reduced fuel taxes of more than NOK 1.4 billion. Vedum maintains that the budget is nevertheless sober and says it will not contribute to increased price growth. High electricity bills have been one of the things that has worried Norwegians the most in the past year. Photo: Ole Berg-Rusten / NTB The budget stipulates that “expensive” primary homes should be valued at 70 per cent of their value as assets. Homes over 10 million are considered expensive, according to SV. The change means that everyone who lives in such housing will be richer on paper when the property tax is calculated. Today, the value over 10 million is valued at 50 per cent, compared to 70 per cent after the change. Primary residence is otherwise valued at 25 percent. Many people in the cities will thus end up above the threshold for the income tax threshold and will have to pay more in tax as a result of this change. When it is a secondary residence, 100 percent of the value will be assessed as a basis for property tax. Many more people in Norwegian cities can receive wealth tax. Photo: Cornelius Poppe / NTB At the same time, the government is weakening the housing savings scheme for young people, BSU. People who save get 10 percent instead of 20 percent back on tax for the money deposited. Those under 34 have so far been able to save up to NOK 27,500 a year in BSU. 20 per cent of this, NOK 5,500, has been reduced in tax for the year. Now this figure is halved, and you can only reduce the tax by 2,750. The weakening of the BSU scheme saves the state more than NOK 600 million in annual expenses. Want to investigate tax against emigration The government parties and SV agree to investigate and propose to the Storting a so-called “emigration tax”. The purpose is to make it less relevant for the richest to move their assets out of the country. The tax must ensure that unrealized gains accrued in Norway up to the time of relocation are actually taxed in Norway. The parties also agree to propose a municipal or state tourist tax, at the latest in connection with the state budget for 2024. The parties agree that in the first half of the year the government will present a proposal for significant support to Ukraine. – We are doing this because there are obvious and great needs, says Støre. It is not yet clear what the specific support will consist of, because it will take time to plan this, says Støre. But he emphasizes that the war-torn Ukraine has great and obvious needs. There has been great commitment to Ukarina in Norway. This commemoration outside the Storting was on 16 November. Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB Due to the heightened security situation, more money will be spent on preparedness in next year’s budget. – We spend more money on civil defense than has been usual due to the security situation, says Vedum. The governing parties and SV agree on a one-off solution for foreigners who, as of 29 November 2022, have been in church asylum for at least five years. The solution involves giving these church asylum seekers residence on a humanitarian basis. The agreement is part of the budget agreement that was presented to the Storting on Tuesday. At the same time, in the negotiations, SV has gained approval that there will be no 26th round of concessions for oil exploration in this parliamentary term. Last autumn, SV reached an agreement with the governing parties that the 26th round of concessions on the Norwegian continental shelf should not be announced in 2022. But the agreement only applies until the end of the year and was therefore taken up by SV in the budget negotiations. Oil is an important part of climate and nature work, says Fylkesnes. – I can confirm that we are also making progress in this area, but I will have to come back to the content of that later, he says. Moves almost NOK 8 billion in the budget agreement SV and the government parties move just over NOK 7.9 billion in the budget agreement that was presented at 6 p.m. The agreement involves NOK 6.6 billion in increased expenses compared to the original budget proposal from the government. In addition, there will be NOK 1.6 billion in reduced expenses. SV satisfied SV leader Audun Lysbakken is satisfied with the result of the budget negotiations. – On SV’s behalf, I can say that we have achieved what we said we were going to achieve. Lysbakken is not worried about the recent complaints from industries that are doing well, and have had increased tax pressure. – This is a budget agreement that gives the most to people who have little. He lists what he is particularly pleased with: – Both the price adjustment of child benefit, but not least that single parents will get NOK 5,000 more. Minimum pensioners get NOK 4,000 more. Disabled persons on the minimum rate receive a one-off payment of NOK 3,000. In addition, there will be a dental reform where young people between the ages of 21 and 26 will get a cheaper dentist, says Lysbakken. Intense negotiations The three parties have been in intense negotiations for the past few days, hoping to reach an agreement on next year’s state budget before Thursday’s budget debate. The three parties therefore agreed on a package to help people with increased living costs. The amount is in the billions. – I think we have managed to come up with a package that meets particularly vulnerable groups, such as minimum pensioners, students, the disabled, families with children and a number of things on general welfare, SV’s head of negotiations Torgeir Knag Fylkesnes told news earlier on Tuesday. AGREEMENT: SV’s Torgeir Knag Fylkesnes believes the party should say yes to the budget agreement with the governing parties. Photo: Lars Nehru Sand / news Even before the budget negotiations, SV agreed with the governing parties to increase the housing allowance sharply in the first months of 2023 by over NOK 800 million. But money for the measure was supposed to come into place in the negotiations. Three parameters The headlines for SV during the negotiations have been fair distribution and climate and environment. In addition, more money for aid is said to have been a difficult topic in the talks. – We measure ourselves along three parameters, one of which is precious time and welfare. The second is climate and the environment, and the last is aid. We must be able to have an achievement in all these areas if we were to be able to recommend this package, says Fylkesnes. – There have been tough negotiations over three weeks now, so I would say that we have met resistance in all our key areas, but slowly things have started to loosen. I don’t actually want to single out one area that has been more difficult than the others, says the SV deputy leader. The negotiations were brought up several times from the finance politicians to SV leader Audun Lysbakken, finance minister and SP leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum and prime minister and Labor leader Jonas Gahr Støre. – The three have been important in getting this done, says Fylkesnes. Last year, SV was able to move NOK 6 billion. Then the Støre government had presented its own priorities as a so-called additional number, after the Solberg government had presented its budget.
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