In a recently started investigation, the Parliamentary Ombudsman asks the Property Assessment Agency if the Agency is able to explain to the property owners the underlying calculations etc. of their property assessments.
The Ombudsman’s investigation stems from a specific case about a citizen who, according to himself, could not be informed how the assessment of his property had been calculated. This is a case where a terraced house has the status of a an owner-occupied flat – and in such cases, according to available information, the citizen’s land value is linked to the value of the total area of the ‘parent property’, which the citizen’s residence is part of.
The citizen complained to the Ombudsman about the Property Assessment Agency’s and the Tax Appeals Agency’s rejections to give access to the calculation of the total land value of this ‘parent property’. His case has also received media attention.
Based on the concrete case, the Ombudsman now asks the Property Assessment Agency to state how the Agency has insight into and how it documents the underlying calculations of the assessment of the type of property that the citizen lives in.
The Ombudsman has also asked if the Property Assessment Agency would generally for the public property assessments be able to explain to the citizens about the underlying calculations for the individual properties.
‘It is important for the trust in authorities that citizens can get an explanation of a decision. This is especially the case in an area as important as property assessments, which are very significant for many people – and also when the assessments are made using computerised calculations’, says Parliamentary Ombudsman Christian Britten Lundblad.
With respect to the citizen’s complaint about rejections to receive the calculations behind the assessment of his land value, the Ombudsman has in a separate consultation letter asked the Tax Appeals Agency to look at the complaint.
Read the Ombudsman’s consultation letter (in Danish) in the general investigation.
Further details:
Director of International Relations Klavs Kinnerup Hede, kkh@ombudsmanden.dk