Iceland Eliminates Fees For Changing Name And Gender Marker

Yesterday, Iceland took a significant step forward when Parliament voted in favour of abolishing the 9,000 ISK fee levied for changing one’s name or gender marker in the National Registry. The change goes into effect immediately, but will take one or two weeks to be fully processed.

As reported, shortly after Iceland celebrated taking the important step of finally allowing nonbinary people to register their gender under a third marker—X, rather than solely M or F—it came to light that the fee to do so was 9,000 ISK.

This was vehemently objected to by Trans Iceland, amongst others, who pointed out the financial difficulties trans people in Iceland already contend with.

Calling this fee a “trans tax”, Pirate Party Andrés Ingi Jónsson called upon other members of Parliament to amend the 2019 gender determination law, pointing out that a single line in the law, specifying changes to the law on fees collected by the national treasury, currently allows the national government to collect fees on changing one’s name.

The then-proposed change received widespread support, including from the National Registry itself, and ultimately was voted into law in the early morning hours of June 13th, with no objections.

The law will go into effect at the close of Parliament, and after the new round of laws has been formally approved by the President of Iceland, a process that should take no more than a week or two.

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