Posted on 05/12/2006 6:05:43 AM PDT by Kurt_Hectic
Shipping and now aquaculture tycoon John Fredriksen is one of the wealthiest men in the world, but no longer Norway's richest. He has turned his back on his homeland and taken Cypriot citizenship.
Fredriksen has felt ill-treated by Norwegian authorities, and the final straw was probably the introduction of a rule limiting the amount of time in Norway to no more than an average of 90 days a year over three years in order not to be taxed by Norway.
Friend and fellow shipping businessman Herbjørn Hansson told Aftenposten that the reason behind Fredriksen's move - his resentment of treatment by Norwegian authorities - is no secret. Hansson said that when the world's biggest tanker and offshore shipping owner is "hunted" out of Norway, it should send a signal.
"If we want people and capital out of Norway, this is the way to do it. The 90-day rule was made to threaten Fredriksen back to Norway. I know Fredriksen well. In reality, Norwegian authorities turned their backs on Fredriksen," Hansson said.
"Norway is in a situation where it is attractive for those who are net consumers of social values to move into the country. It is not attractive for those who are net contributors to social construction to remain in the country. Can that be right?" Hansson said.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was unmoved by such arguments.
"It hasn't crossed my mind to adjust the tax system so that John Fredriksen can avoid taxes, for it is exactly people like John Fredriksen that should pay," Labor PM Stoltenberg told news agency NTB.
"There are many who want to become Norwegian citizens. If John Fredriksen doesn't, it is not a problem. It doesn't bother me. He hasn't lived in Norway for several decades. He hasn't paid tax to Norway in several decades either," Stoltenberg said.
Stoltenberg added that Fredriksen would always be eligible for a minimum pension even with no taxable income - but the tycoon would have to move back and spend time in Norway first.
Capitalism and wealth is a horrible thing in Norway it seems... almost criminal...
BTW: Fredriksen is on 293. place on the Forbes-list - he's good for ap. 11,6 billion norwegian kroner.
Let the socialists screw up. They will be gone in 2009. BTW the other rich people are not going to leave the country.
Socialism at work! If the Dims regain Congressional control this year, we can expect the same treatment here....sooner rather than later.
Who cares? It makes leftists feel good. That's what counts. Reality is for someone else to worry about.
Somebody's shrugging.
Socialism, the home of the lame, lazy and non creative.
Funny, that in all of the "worker's paradises" nobody seems to want to work. Do they ever do the math about where the money comes from to pay for all their "rights" and benefits?
I guess not. All they teach in their "politically correct" schools would be the soft, subjective "liberal" arts. Nothing real, pragmatic or empirical.
I like Denmark, I was even married there, but I wouldn't want to live there.
The rich escaping oppressive taxes is popular all over Europe. Michael Schumacher doesn't even live in Germany anymore.
In Germany at least the schools are damn good. Well, except for those schools that have been overrun by Turkish and Arab gangs.
Maybe that Norwegian tax rate of 80% drove him away.....
I lived in Denmark for a time on the 1980s. The working Danes joked - complained - that for every working Dane there were two other Danes on his back. That was twenty-five years ago so it's probably three or four on a working-man's back!
Well, whilst we're jeering at "socialist Norway", we should remember that if this fellow were American, moving to Cyprus would not help him: the US taxes it's citizens GLOBALLY. Norway only taxes them if they live in Norway a certain amount of time.
Also, an American cannot escape the US Income Tax by simply giving up US citizenship and moving elsewhere, as the Norwegian did. An individual may not be a US citizen anymore, may have renounced his citizenship, but the US Income Tax Code considers him a taxable citizen for a full TEN YEARS after he gives up US citizenship.
Further, in Norway, there is a statute of limitations on non-payment of taxes and fraud. In America, there is NO statute of limitations on tax fraud.
So, Norway is socialist because it wants to tax a rich fellow...and he escapes those taxes by fleeing to Cyprus.
What does that, then, make America, where one cannot escape taxes by moving anywhere in the world, and one cannot even escape taxes by renouncing US citizenship?
I didn't know that...interresting...
Exactly what I wanted to point out.
But i wonder, if you're not in the US and have renounced your citizenship, how can the US collect the taxes?
D
To paraphrase Luther, "Now they have the Turks."
My friends and I were talking about Peter Forsberg, and how with his recurring ankle problems how he might retire from hockey and move back to Sweden. I made a joke about how he would soon be taxed into poverty, but at least he'll get free ankle surgeries the rest of his life!
(1) Do you have assets anywhere in the USA? If so, garnished.
(2) Do you ever wire money? If so, you don't know the route a wire takes, electronically. It rarely is A-to-B. If it electronically passes through anywhere that is within US jurisdiction (like bouncing off a US satellite, for example), the IRS already has the mechanism in place to grab it out of cyberspace and route it straight into the US Treasury. The Americans will grab ALL of it. If you say that you only owe 1% of what they grab, then you have to come into a US court to argue that...and then they have you in their power.
(3) Tax treaties. Almost all of the major developed countries have tax treaties with each other, and assist each other in pursuing tax fraud. If you welch on your US taxes, declare yourself a German and move to Germany. The Germans will probably enforce a tax levy by the US IRS if it is sent via letters rogatory and brought into German court. So, where are you going to live? Western Europe? They governments in Western Europe will assist the IRS in getting you.
(4) Someday, you'll come back onto US soil. Then they get you. Remember, you can't go to Western Europe, so you have to go to places like Latin America, Africa, Asia. And when you get old and sick, as everyone does? When you get cancer or need cardiac surgery, where do you go? Bogota General Hospital? Nope. You have to go back into the civilized world. And when you do, they've got you. You also have to wire money to the hospitals, etc. And the US government may pick that wire right out of the air.
You can fight that sort of thing, but you can't fight it by proxy. If the US government just flat out illegally steals from you, on foreign soil, the only way to attack them is in US Federal court...and to be able to bring a case you have to enter America and place yourself under US jurisdiction.
Some folks discover that, when they try to stick a finger in the eye of the US government and flee abroad, that the US government obeys no law at all in going after them, because the only way that US government abuses of law can be PROSECUTED is by going into a US court in the United States. And if you try to do that, you have to come into the US and submit to US jurisdiction.
The US government reaches into international wire transfers from criminals and simply steals the money sometimes, even outside of US territory. What's the criminal going to do about it if the US government behaves like a criminal towards him? The US government steals from criminals all over the world, and keeps the money. Because the US government knows that the only way to bring the US government to justice for committing crimes of theft is...to come into the US courts. And if you do that, they have your person.
Moral: if you're a tax fraud who owes a billion, your billion isn't safe in some bank in the Caymans. The US government can penetrate said bank using operatives and steal your money. Then what do you do? Prove they did it, first of all, that's hard enough. But even if you prove it, how do you bring the US government to justice for massive theft? You can't. You'd have to go into the US Court. Set foot on US soil, and even if you win the money back in court, you're still rotting in jail for your crimes.
Really, if you step outside of the law and give the US Federal Government the finger, there is no law that protects you either, and the Government knows it can steal your property everywhere in the world that it feels like, and you've got no recourse.
That's why drug lords even in Colombia use cash and physical assets. Start laundering money through Switzerland, and American (and other Western) agents will, with complete sang froid, send in someone to empty out the account and put it in intel black ops. And the drug lord has access to WHAT court or investigative service to bring the US or other Western government to justice for a literal bank account robbery? None whatsoever.
The US government criminally steals from criminals all over the world, with impunity. So do all other Western governments. If you're a small fish, you can get away with it. But notice how the big fish like this Norwegian, no matter how angry he is, follows the full legal procedures. Because if he doesn't, and simply becomes an outlaw, when there is that much money involved, governments can steal that money, but he can't go into any court to get it back. Individuals are powerless against intelligence services of major countries taking their money right out of accounts.
So, hard core criminals have to keep money in cash, or put them in nasty Arab banks with nasty Arab princes willing to steal their money. That's how it works.
How does Soros get away with it?
Get away with what?
I haven't heard that Soros is in trouble with the law.
Thanks for the very interesting post.
You make me wonder about the evident parallels between organized crime behavior and govt behavior.
Why is it, these days, that I wonder if our govt would behave much differently if it was run by the Mob?
Odd thought?
Well, I think that once one moves to the level of statecraft and lawmaking, that it is simply about power, and that might literally makes right.
Money is a key part of might, but that's for what money can buy. Government is essentially unlimited in its ability to use money to buy violent power. All other entities are limited by governments, who do not share their monopoly of violent power.
I think that international law is literally a matter of might makes right, so the only effective law AGAINST government that one can realistically speak of is at the level of internal citizen vis a vis his own gov't.
Here, I think the US is pretty good. US citizens have all sorts of recourse to independent courts. Where a US citizen gets in trouble is if he breaks US law, flees the country, and tries to rob the government of tax dollars. THEN you have a situation where the government can bring its awesome violent power to bear at will, but the individual cannot hope to defend himself against it. Only by going back inside the country and taking the government to court can he fight back. But he's really a criminal, so his claim of having "principles" to stand on is pretty weak, first of all, and secondly he's legitimately subject to arrest and prosecution if he comes into the country in order to use the courts to fight the government.
This doesn't seem particularly unjust to me.
But then, I don't think that men are individual sovereigns or can be. We are individuals, but we're all subject to government, and I think it is our duty to obey reasonable government. I view the extremely wealthy who try to game the tax laws and flee the country to some banana republic as being essentially petty individuals who have the pretence that they should be able to set themselves up as their own sovereigns, because they are rich. Meanwhile, their cheating on their legitimately-owed taxes just increases the burden for me.
I have no problem with my sovereign reaching out with its full might to take the guy's money away, all of it, because his money was the only claim he ever had to try and buy sovereignty. Then, once he's paid every penny he owes, just like I have to, and extensive penalties too, for trying to evade the taxes, then he can be given another chance to behave properly.
I don't believe that men have the right to decide they are going to simply secede from government. And if one decides to, well, then he's a small government unto himself in a world where might makes right, and where national boundaries are places where two armies stopped each other.
Given that, if he really wants to become his own little principality, then my government cleaning him out is simply an invasion and conquest of a weak foreign country. That's how we got the East and West from the Indians and Mexico, and I'm not planning on going back to Paris.
I guess the moral is that if an individual steps outside the law, he's acting like a sovereign as opposed to a citizen. Now, as a citizen, we have rights vis-a-vis our sovereign, but other sovereigns have no rights, and there's nothing wrong with taking from them when it is in our best interests to do so.
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