De WOZ-waarde bepaalt de gemeentebelasting.

WOZ is an abbreviation of Waardering Onroerende Zaken, the official term behind this property valuation system.

Dutch usually uses a hyphen when an abbreviation or acronym is attached to a normal noun. So:

• WOZ
  • waarde → WOZ-waarde

The main noun here is waarde. The hyphen just makes the compound easier to read.

Because both waarde and belasting are de-words in Dutch.

A useful rule is that in a compound noun, the article is determined by the last part:

• de waarde → de WOZ-waarde
• de belasting → de gemeentebelasting

So even though WOZ and gemeente come first, the article depends on waarde and belasting.

Bepaalt is the present tense, third-person singular form of the verb bepalen.

Conjugation:

• ik bepaal
• jij bepaalt
• hij/zij/het bepaalt
• de WOZ-waarde bepaalt

Since de WOZ-waarde is a singular subject, Dutch uses bepaalt with -t.

In a normal Dutch main clause, the usual order is:

subject + finite verb + object

So in:

De WOZ-waarde bepaalt de gemeentebelasting.

• de WOZ-waarde = subject
• bepaalt = finite verb
• de gemeentebelasting = object

In other words, the WOZ-waarde is the thing doing the determining.

If Dutch wanted to make de gemeentebelasting the subject, the sentence would need a different structure, for example a passive one:

De gemeentebelasting wordt bepaald door de WOZ-waarde.

Because Dutch normally writes compound nouns as one word, where English often uses two words or an adjective + noun.

So:

• gemeente
  • belasting → gemeentebelasting

This is very common in Dutch:

• huis
  • deur → huisdeur
• inkomen
  • belasting → inkomstenbelasting or similar tax compounds
• gemeente
  • raad → gemeenteraad

For English speakers, Dutch compounds often look long, but they are very normal.

Yes, in this sentence it is very similar to English:

• De WOZ-waarde = the WOZ value
• bepaalt = determines
• de gemeentebelasting = the municipal tax

So the structure is:

Subject + Verb + Object

However, Dutch has an important rule: in a main clause, the finite verb usually has to be in second position. That means if another element comes first, the subject and verb switch places:

• Vandaag bepaalt de WOZ-waarde de gemeentebelasting.
• In veel gemeenten bepaalt de WOZ-waarde de gemeentebelasting.

So this sentence looks English-like, but Dutch word order can change more easily because of the verb-second rule.

WOZ is capitalized because it is an abbreviation.

Gemeentebelasting is a normal common noun, and Dutch does not capitalize ordinary nouns the way German does.

So:

• WOZ = capitals, because it is an acronym
• gemeentebelasting = lower-case, because it is a regular noun

A rough English-friendly guide would be:

• De → duh
• WOZ → spelled out as wee oo zet
• waarde → roughly VAAR-duh
• bepaalt → roughly buh-PAALT
• gemeentebelasting → roughly guh-MAYN-tuh-buh-LAS-ting

A full rough reading:

duh wee-oo-zet-VAAR-duh buh-PAALT duh guh-MAYN-tuh-buh-LAS-ting

A few notes:

• aa is a long vowel in waarde and bepaalt
• w in Dutch is not exactly English w; it is softer, somewhere between English w and v
• the g in gemeente is the Dutch guttural g, which has no exact English equivalent