The government has come up with one budget leak after another, but we have not received an answer as to whether the extraordinary employers’ contribution will be continued next year.
These days, the biggest pieces are being put into the puzzle which in October will become a state budget for 2024. The right-wing leaders Henrik Asheim and Nikolai Astrup have a good point when they ask the government already now to show the cards. They want to know when the additional tax is removed.
This year, a five percent extraordinary employers’ tax was introduced on incomes over NOK 750,000. The news came like lightning from the blue when the state budget for 2023 was presented in October last year. The extra tax will bring an income to the treasury of close to NOK 8 billion, and this is a bill that has been passed on to most of the country’s companies. The government stated that the additional tax is temporary, but no end date was given.
The government should show the cards as soon as possible.
Industry Minister Jan Christian Vestre (Ap) claims that the additional tax is a situational measure. “When we see that the pressure in the economy is beginning to ease and we have control over the situation, the intention is that this will be phased out gradually,” says Vestre to NRK. He says that the government, in connection with the presentation of the state budget, will come back to how the phasing out will be done.
[ Lars West Johnsen: Heldagsskolen som forsvant. ]
Let’s make an attempt to interpret what the minister for business is saying. The fee must therefore be phased out gradually. This will probably mean that the fee will be scaled down, and in the best case it will be somewhat lower as early as next year. More interesting is that we have to wait for an answer until the first week of October. Voters will therefore go to the polls unknowingly in just over a week’s time, and the country’s companies will have to live in uncertainty for an extra month.
The government should remove the extraordinary employers’ contribution with the stroke of a pen already now. It should never have been introduced, but panic unfortunately took over when Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum (Sp) was to put the final touches on the budget work last autumn. Extraordinary expenses, including as a result of the war in Ukraine and the electricity subsidy scheme, had to be financed.
[ Lars West Johnsen: Det handler om tillit. ]
Then it was easy to resort to an additional surcharge on employer’s tax. And it was warned that this was a temporary tax. NHO demands that this tax be history next year. It is tempting to recall that the precursor to VAT was also introduced as a temporary arrangement in 1935. This became a permanent tax which this year gives the state an income of NOK 400 billion – as much as tax on income and wealth combined.
The government is now sitting together in a two-day budget conference. Here, the 2024 budget is in reality nailed down. Once this work has been completed, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre should give a clear answer as soon as possible on what is happening with employer’s tax. Voters should know. It is okay for the government to leak goodies from the budget. But this is only half the truth. If the Prime Minister still chooses to keep the employer card close to his chest, he probably has a bad card in hand.
[ Kjell Werner: Glem ideen om eldreforlik. ]
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2023-08-31 10:57:30
#fee #introduced
