What’s the difference between marriage and cohabitation in Norway?

3 comments

1. The biggest difference is that everything is “yours” or “mine” when you are cohabiting.

   When you are married, it generally becomes “ours”.

   There are benefits to tax and personal economy. Say that the wealth tax limit is 5 (just to make it easy). Joey and Lisa are cohabiting. Joey has 3 wealth, and Lisa has 6. Lisa therefore has to pay wealth tax, as she is over the limit.

   Joey and Lisa get married, and instead if having “their own” wealth tax limits of 5, they now share one wealth tax limit of 10. Together they have 9 wealth, and therefore do not go over the limit and do not have to pay tax.

   Similar examples exist all over tax regulations, deductions, and such, but the differences between married and cohabiting in terms of taxes are slowly narrowing.

   Benefits-wise I don’t believe there are any differences, but I could be wrong.

2. Dagpenger replaces so and so much of your wage. Just as you get your individual wage, you also get individual dagpenger. Same goes for AAP and uføretrygd, though those are lowered somewhat when cohabitating(/married) because you save on expenses by not living alone. With marriage also comes a certain duty to provide for the spouse if need be that isn’t there in couples only cohabitating iirc.

3. >For example, if a couple is unemployed, can they both get their own dagpenger?

   Yes. For dagpenger it doesn’t matter if you are single, cohabiting, or married. It also doesn’t matter if your partner is working or is also unemployed.

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   >And will the tax of income be calculated based on the family?

   Income tax is separate for all persons. It doesn’t matter if you are single, cohabiting, or married.