Posted on 05/26/2023 2:36:59 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Norway hiked its wealth tax. A bunch of rich people got the hell out.
If your net wealth is approximately $135,000 or more and you live in Norway, you've long been subject to a 0.85 percent wealth tax. That rate has, as of this year, been hiked to 1.1 percent by the center-left government, and even more gobs of cash will be taken from rich people worth roughly $1.8 million, who will be taxed at a rate of 1.3 percent.
Unfortunately for the Norwegian lefties—and their American counterparts who argue for similar taxes to be instituted here—this wealth tax hasn't really generated the revenue they'd expected. It has instead resulted in rich people boarding their superyachts and leaving those fjords behind forevermore.
Per the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv, 30 of the country's multimillionaires and billionaires left the country last year in advance of the wealth tax hike. "This was more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years, it added," noted The Guardian. "Even more super-rich individuals are expected to leave this year because of the increase in wealth tax in November, costing the government tens of millions in lost tax receipts."
The research department for Statistics Norway admits the same in a 2021 paper: "The tax revenue from wealth taxation is modest, only approximately 15 billion NOK per year, which corresponds to around 1.1 percent of the total tax revenue and 0.4 percent of GDP." (Other gems: "The richest Scandinavians keep a substantial part of their wealth in offshore tax havens. The wealth of the top 0.01 of Norwegian households increases by about 25 percent if offshore wealth is included.")
Many have moved to Switzerland, taking a leaf out of the book of recently deceased music legend Tina Turner, who never officially gave up her U.S. citizenship, probably to avoid having to fork over the hefty exit tax (a 23.8 percent on worldwide assets) our own country imposes. Norway's most-taxed individual, billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke, recently moved to Lugano, costing Norway the equivalent of almost $16 million in lost tax revenue annually. Since 2008, Dagens Næringsliv estimated that Røkke has been forced to cough up the equivalent of $135 million. Another billionaire, Tord Ueland Kolstad, who just moved to Lucerne, mournfully told the Norwegian broadcaster TV 2: "This was not what I wanted, but the toughened and increased tax rules of the current government means that I, as the founder and responsible owner, have no choice."
In other words, wealth taxes work exactly as libertarians warned: They generate far less revenue than anticipated and result in the ultra-rich hopping to fairer locales that don't see them as cash cows to milk.
As for our own expats, like Turner, if they haven't given up their U.S. citizenship, they're hit with privacy-eroding requirements like the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which forces foreign banks to report to the U.S. government assets held by Americans. Expats from this country also get hit twice by the taxman: once by the government of their country of residence, and once by the U.S. government, in a move that is out of step with how most other places treat their deserters. It's no wonder a high-net-worth individual like Turner never formally renounced her U.S. citizenship but took Swiss citizenship with the "intent to lose her U.S. citizenship," seemingly to avoid the exit tax.
Whether it's wealth or exit taxes, FATCA or other intrusions, people behave in predictable ways regardless of where they were born: They tend to want to preserve both their money and privacy to the fullest extent possible.
Norway's learning that the hard way.
Similarly, well-paid academic types, calling on "sharing," dropped out of conversations when they were asked to share THEIR share by impecunious grad students.
Sharing of the wealth would occur only for a very short time.
When the wealthy stop being wealthy, there would be no wealth left to share.
Does that means all the politicians will flee ,LOL
Would thunkit?
There was a creepozoid New York politician who learned that one of the reasons Rush left New York was due to the insane taxes. The pol stated ‘if I had known he would leave, I’d have raised taxes a long time ago.’
Later, another pol saw the writing on the wall and actually admitted that if too many of the ‘rich’ leave New York, it will hurt the government’s revenue stream.
No Kidding Dick Tracy!
Nope...crickets.
Norway insurrection!
$135,000 is classified as super rich??
anything above 10%.
The avg national casino tax on slot machines avg just under 10%.
if 28% or 33% or 5% resulted in greater revenue-
that would be the avg slot machine tax rate.
it is analogous enough.
His name was Prince Andrew (the Uber Groper) Cuomo. He’s gone and we have a cheap, insane imitation known as Princess Kathy Hochul in his place. Totally screwed up.
Another way to look at it-
regardless of the tax code-15-25% of the US gdp is collected in taxes. We’ve spent over 25% 15 yrs in a row-we’ve never collected over 25% of it.
Using the slot machine 10% it implies that the 15-25% collected in taxes is 100% too high or double what would yield maximum revenues-that not only passes the sniff test-it sounds abt right.
Since Biden.
$32k annual income in the US qualifies one to be in the top 1% of income worldwide...we are vastly undertaxed according to Norway...
—”$135,000 is classified as super rich??”
Unlikely in Norway.
I have a relative that is a MASTER of THE UNIVERSE type, every year he takes his family on an eight-week vacation to different parts of the world.
He had many tales of the high cost of living in Norway.
Government is nothing more than legal organized crime...whatever the country.
1) LOL
2) An old idea for elites....In the U.K., Mick Jagger and co.had to pay 93 percent of their earnings in taxes. That’s when their financial advisor, Prince Rupert Lowenstein, suggested the band move to France, with much lower tax rates. And thus, The Rolling Stones became tax exiles, which is where their 1972 album gets its name from.
3) Donovan, as the Beatles, was taxed at 96% in 1969 by his federal government. He left the UK and was told “As long as I didn’t put my foot on UK soil, I didn’t have to pay any income tax. It wasn’t the money, it was the principle.” He later came back and put his foot slowly on the ground and the government starting squeezing him for taxes.
Wealth tax my be fairer than income tax, but it is notoriously hard to enforce.
In US there is property tax and car taxes (both kind of wealth taxes), because these things are hard to hide. But how can you account for your jewelry or find all your money.
And in worst case, you just move out of the country and that’s it. No more property tax!
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