a b s t r a c tIn this paper we study the complexity of deontic logics grounded on norm-based semantics and apply norm-based deontic logic to access control. Four principal norm-based deontic logics have been proposed so far: imperative logic, input/output logic, deontic default logic and deontic defeasible logic. We present the readers that imperative logic is complete for the 2ed level of the polynomial hierarchy and deontic default logic is located in the 3ed level of the polynomial hierarchy. We then show how it is possible to impose restrictions to imperative logic such that the complexity goes down to be tractable, allowing the logic to be used in practical applications. We focus on a specific application: access control.