VG: Tajik got tax-free commuter housing with unused lease
The current Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Hadia Tajik received according to VG a tax-free commuter home after she sent the Prime Minister’s Office (SMK) the lease for a home in Rogaland that she never lived in.
Tajik was a law student who lived in a student dormitory when she was brought in in 2006 as a political adviser to Bjarne Håkon Hanssen.
At the time, she was registered at her parents’ home in Rogaland. According to VG, Tajik first applied for commuter housing, and stated that she does not pay for housing in her hometown.
Therefore, she was told that she had to pay taxes on the commuter home, the newspaper writes. Six days later, according to VG, she must have submitted a new application.
This time, she wrote that she had expenses related to the home in her hometown, and attached a lease she signed with her parents’ former neighbors, according to the newspaper.
Thus, the Tajik avoided taxing the commuter home. But she confirms the apartment in Rogaland to VG that she never lived in. She says, however, that she had housing expenses at her parents’ home, but has not presented documentation on this to the newspaper.
– It is simply not possible for me to go back and say what I thought on the first, fifth or eleventh of December 2006, Tajik says to VG today.
At some point, Tajik is said to have changed his address to the apartment in the contract, in the population register.
VG has asked Tajik to investigate with the population register when she changed the address of the apartment in the contract, and whether it was before or after she was informed that the commuter home had to be taxed. Tajik did not want to explain this to VG.
– I have been pretty bad at utilizing the commuter housing scheme, if that is what you suggest. For the past 12 years, I have paid for housing in Oslo myself – and in several of these years also paid for my own housing in Rogaland. It was a matter of course that I, with a far better salary than my parents, paid for myself at home, says Tajik to VG.
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