If it's January, it's that time of the year again when the winter hits hard, around 9 or 10 degrees Celsius, when the Blue Monday is kicking in, and when of course, the city hall (Gemeente) is sending another round of taxes for the current year. Let's see how these evolve in comparison with the last year.
OZB Tarieven (House tax)
This is a percentage applied to an "official" valuation of your property (if you're the owner).
| 2019 | 2020 | Increase absolute value | Increase % |
| 0.1741% | 0.1578% | -0.0163 | -10.32 |
The trick in this case is that the value of the property is also rising from year to year. You can check the current value of any property in the NL here. The taxation is applied to the WOZ value from one year ago, so in this case 2019.
A simulated calculation (based on real values, the amount is roughly median):
WOZ Waarde for a house in 2018 - €160.000, in 2019 €175.000.
Tax paid in 2019: €278.56, tax paid in 2020: €276.15. The difference is negligible in this case, and despite the decrease of taxation rate, the amount stayed the same.
AFVALSTOFFENHEFFING (Trash tax)
| 2019 | 2020 | Increase absolute value | Increase % | |
| 1 person | €244.80 | €252.49 | €7.69 | 3.14 |
| 2+ persons | €289.30 | €298.36 | €9.08 | 3.13 |
HONDENBELASTING (Dog tax)
| 2019 | 2020 | Increase absolute value | Increase % | |
| per 1 dog | €86.17 | €93.00 | €6.83 | 7.92 |
RIOOLHEFFING (Sewage tax)
| 2019 | 2020 | Increase absolute value | Increase % | |
| 1 person | €92.65 | €100.93 | €8.28 | 8.93 |
| 2 persons | €129.00 |
€140.01 |
€11.01 |
8.53 |
| 3 persons | €165.40 |
€179.10 |
€13.70 |
8.28 |
| 4+ persons | €222.00 | €240.46 | €18.46 | 8.31 |
Conclusion: the house tax, in absolute calculation stayed pretty much the same, the trash tax 3.10%, the dog tax 8%, and the sewage tax around 8.50%.
Conclusion 2: once you start adding point to point, you realize that the reported (official government) inflation of 2.63 % is just BS and things might be different in real life.
Note: the taxes are specific per city hall (this example is for Lelystad, FL). For example in Amsterdam you end up paying €368 for trash (2+ persons). The rest of the taxes might be higher or lower, depending on where you live. It would be interesting for a future article to point out these differences.
