Warning: not an economist :)

I recognize your point but am wary of it being supported with direct job creation numbers, as that doesn’t reflect the scale of secondary industries (ie. indirect jobs created by oil & mining may be a larger number than direct jobs created) and also, job numbers don’t reflect the scale of the companies creating the jobs.

All tax regimes, including zero tax, are social engineering.

It's a creative presentation that presents it in terms of percentages of taxation of ownership while assuming most wealth tax would be paid with dividends (which makes sense in a mature company, not in a startup, where you might be more likely to find other approaches). It's not changed enough to make much difference from when I dealt with it.

There is still a wealth tax in Germany which is, in fact, enshrined in its constitution. However, the tax has not been collected since 1997 due to legal issues regarding its calculation. Back then, the constitutional court decided that wealth in the form of properties would have to be taxed more. However, instead of adjusting the calculation, politics instead decided to suspend collecting the tax. Ever since, there have been multiple political initiatives aimed at restarting the collection of the tax, none successful so far, despite a large majority of Germans (70+%) being in favor of collecting the wealth tax.

In some states there are, which is also a bad & unjust practice. The difference is that the rates are between 0.49% and 2.5% and reassessment period differs between the states/localities (these are local taxes). This is way less that the proposed Norway taxes and "value" can be established much more justly than a "startup shares".

Yes and property taxes are terrible.

Tax. Vacant. Land.

Usually, you get a credit or deduction that can only apply to future tax liability in the same category. Ex: Capital losses are stuck with capital gains in the USA and can only be applied to $3000 of your income per year otherwise. These rule systems are usually incredibly self-serving.

The wealth tax is yearly based on your wealth that year.

At most you'd get a rebate of your future tax payment as is the current practice.

Yes.

There is a difference between a well-established market with "value" that is established and something much more speculative like other type of assets.

If people there are OK with these taxes and don't vote them out it's their choice. My point is that it's a bad and wrong solution with bad consequences.

There is data about this: https://www.gemconsortium.org/data

And also check how many big companies have been started in the last 10 years in EU.

If their business grows at a rate higher than interest, there's no reason why the bank wouldn't be happy to add the interest to the loan. If their business is growing at a rate lower than interest, it's a poor investment and they ought to sell it off and put their money somewhere else. Such as lending it out.

Let's say you have a tax debt of 1m, and your choice is to take out a 1m net dividend. Now you have to pay dividend tax.

The other alternative is to borrow 1m, and pay interest on a 1m loan.

Unless you hold the loan long enough for the aggregate interest accrued until you're able to sell some shares exceeds the dividend tax, it's a net saving.

How will any oil-dependent finances deal with the end of oil? By saving and diversifying. Norway's got the savings down good, and in a few decades they should start thinking about diversifying. Until then, they're in a great position because they didn't spend all their oil money on weapons and instead put it into savings for their people.

It's a good question. If that were the case, I would have expected to also see other oil rich countries at the top of those rankings.

Yes, they're just a petrostate. Over half their economy is oil and mining.

> They’re ‘unrealized gains’ for a reason

The bridge that governments are attempting to make is between "you can't tax me on these, they're unrealized gains!" and "I'm going to fund my billionaire lifestyle by borrowing against these unrealized gains."

Maybe tax people on those unrealized gains if they use them as collateral?

He's not "painting" a picture. He's citing statistics. You've countered with an anecdote.

Of course data is not perfect, and there are often issues with methodology, data quality, or analysis the data. Even so, I usually find data more persuasive than anecdotes.

They left because they didn't want to pay taxes. No monkeying about, they want to be rich and tax free.

Alcohol is so expensive as a choice with broad political support in Norway. Yes, Norwegians like to whine about it, and go to Sweden or Denmark to avoid it, yet Norwegians also keep voting for the parties (almost all) that agree with keeping alcohol taxes high.

Rent is high in large parts because average incomes are high. This is one of the effects of a relatively flat income structure. As someone earning far above average, I'm better off in the UK, while someone on a job below the top ~10% or so would probably have a higher standard of living in Norway.

Not having things run 24/7 is annoying, but a factor of being a country with one of the lowest population densities in the world.

> They were against the socialist government trying to rip them off with a completely unfair taxation.

Nobody forced them to start their businesses. The wealth tax is not new, and has remained in place through both left- and right-wing governments, thought with some swings back and forth in rates.

Don't forget that Norway banned Life of Brian and people had to travel to Sweden to watch it.

Taxing people for going into debt certainly an... interesting idea.

Anybody earning a wage pays tax on revenue, not profit. Property taxes can be even be on value, not revenue or profit. For any given tax burden, I don't see the "justice" problem by shifting more of that towards value and revenue and less towards profit. You could argue that in a vacuum that it is more just because it slightly incentivized investment over saving. And I'm sure you could argue the reverse too.

However, to me this mostly looks like a practical issue, and the traditional dogma that a broader tax base is a better one likely holds here too. Taxes should be on all three categories, and for both legal and real persons - and thus each specific category lower (and in particular thereby reducing the height of specific niche corners cases such as this one, and also reducing the opportunity to game the system).

Also, it's interesting to listen to anecdotes like this, but caveat lector; the article's author's experience may not be the norm; and the issues they experienced may be due to the specifics of norway's taxation system or their personal choices, not the principles behind it; and last but not least as long as money can flow mostly freely between tax systems it's not enough for a system to be fair and well designed in a vacuum; it also need to consider how shifting wealth/income/profits across borders will affect outcomes.

To my mind, this is all pretty orthogonal to justice. Clearly, you see that differently. Why does this smack of injustice to you?

You can avoid profit indefinitely - just ask uber. That's if we're sticking to the customary definition of "profit".

So that you know, the practice in question is to open a line of credit on the value of your stock. This enables you to put large amounts of money in your pocket without "realising" your gains. It's a blatant tax dodge. "going into debt" lol no. Close the loophole.

> Norway imposes a wealth tax that taxes unrealized gains at approximately 1% annually. Calculated on the full market value for publicly traded assets and the book value of private companies. On New Year's Eve, whatever your net worth - including illiquid assets - is subject to this tax. It doesn't matter if you're running a loss-making startup with no cash flow, if your investments have tanked after the valuation date, or even if your company has gone bankrupt—you still owe the tax.

"unrealised gains". gains, not losses.

I’m not sure why you think a wealth tax is related to entrepreneurship ship. I get that you’ll find a lot of people who like the author don’t want to pay taxes, but you’re going to find quite a lot who do. Especially here in Scandinavia. Of course it’s less of a problem when you have a non-crypto product which actually makes money or gives you the opportunity to take out a loan based on your assets.

I agree that there will be an ideologically divide, but I don’t think it’s related to entrepreneurship as much as it is to greed. Especially because those crypto “billionaires” were moving to Switzerland anyway. Personally I can see why you would think it was anti-business because it is. You have to keep in mind that not everyone thinks “businesses” which can’t make money, and likely never will, are always a benefit to society.

It’s amazing to me that people think this is what socialism is. This isn’t seizing the means of production.

And yet socialist countries starved millions, and their only periods of relative prosperity were when they loosened their ideology and allowed limited market reforms.