Three parties in the Danish Parliament have summoned Tax Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt to hearings over valuation errors affecting 100,000 apartments.
Liberal Alliance, the Danish Democrats and Venstre have each independently called the minister in for a hearing, DR reports. The case concerns an error that led Vurderingsstyrelsen to stop sending out new apartment assessments for several months.
Per DR, the agency halted the mailings in May 2026. By that point, about 100,000 of roughly 300,000 apartment valuations had already been issued to owners.
Attention centers on a meeting between Vurderingsstyrelsen and the Ministry of Taxation at the end of May 2026. According to the ministry, officials were verbally warned there of a potential problem with the property valuations of owner-occupied apartments.
The ministry and Engel-Schmidt maintain that the minister himself was first informed in early September 2026. He took over the Ministry of Taxation from Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen on June 3, 2026, days after the May meeting.
Parties question the timeline
Liberal Alliance tax spokesperson Mads Strange told DR there are two logical explanations. Either the department withheld the briefing from the minister, or the minister is not telling the truth about when he was informed.
Strange said the parties behind the assessment system were not warned before DR published the errors in early September 2026. As he put it to DR, problems cannot be solved if lawmakers are not told they exist.
Venstre’s tax spokesperson Marie Brixtofte has also called a hearing and sharply criticized the course of events. She wants to know why the ministry did not react to the information it received in May 2026.
Hans Kristian Skibby of the Danish Democrats has scheduled his hearing for September 30, 2026. According to Skibby, it should establish who knew what and when, and whether further valuation problems exist.
In a written reply to DR, Engel-Schmidt said the system adopted in 2017 is cumbersome and highly complicated. He noted that Venstre and Liberal Alliance sat in the VLAK government when the property assessment law was passed.
The minister also said he was not informed of the paused valuations when Parliament approved another two-year indexation of the new assessments before the summer recess. The Ministry of Taxation states that it is standard practice to investigate issues before presenting them to the minister and coalition parties.
TV 2 reported on September 7, 2026, that the errors affected 100,000 apartment owners and that the minister called a press conference on the case. As noted by TV 2, he proposed giving homeowners access to an independent second assessment.
