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What happened when Norway raised taxes on the wealthy? (www.youtube.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/europe@feddit.org
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TL;DW: Had to do more about exit tax than wealth tax.

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[–] 80 points 2 months ago (16 children)

I think the whole „wealthy exodus“ is completely overblown anyway. Good luck moving your entire business, real estate and other fixed assets abroad very quickly. Have fun paying all those exit taxes. Because those already exist in a lot of places.

And that all is implying you want to leave over a wealth tax in the first place because something tells me you won‘t.

Because this place made you rich in the first place. You are a huge winner in this system. This still works out for you. Leave to some place you know very little about and see where it gets you. More likely than not, you won‘t even seriously try to leave because by all means you are still a huge benefactor of this system.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Switzerland has a wealth tax which tells you all you need to know about this argument

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Some places do. But a lot of Kantons does not. That’s where they moved.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 child)

    Leave to some place you know very little about and see where it gets you.

    It's not an either/or situation, you can stay and just move (a part of) your liquid assets to avoid taxes. A wealthy person cannot be divided over multiple body parts, but their wealth can easily and with barely any effort be spread over multiple places.

    Considering most western countries allow you to deduct your losses, you don't even need to move your physical assets to avoid paying taxes. Just leave some bad investments in your country of origin and move your profitable investments abroad. If even a well known figure like Steve Jobs can could get away with paying $0 taxes, surely the lesser known of the 1% can realize that too.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Good luck moving your entire business, real estate and other fixed assets abroad very quickly. Have fun paying all those exit taxes. Because those already exist in a lot of places.

    Companies could be moved pretty quickly, and once you move the company headquarter, most of the job is done, the business don't need to move, simply the money generated goes somewhere else. Real problem could be the real estate, but that is solvable.
    Personal wealth ? Movable without too much trouble.
    It not quick in every aspect but it is doable.

    And that all is implying you want to leave over a wealth tax in the first place because something tells me you won‘t.

    I think this depend on where you live.
    In Norway probably you are right but we had other examples where rising tax on the rich ended with the rich fleeing the country. In EU there are countries that are "at war" over the retirees, trying to offer better taxation to attract them (basically because they know that even if they pay less taxes, living there they spend money anyway), so maybe it is not completely false that people would go where the taxes are lower.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Companies could be moved pretty quickly, and once you move the company headquarter, most of the job is done

    Wealth taxed are usually tied to the residence or citizenship of the owner, not where a company is headquartered.
    Typically, companies move their headquarters to tax havens to avoid business taxes, not wealth taxes.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Wealth taxed are usually tied to the residence or citizenship of the owner, not where a company is headquartered.

    True. But there are 2 things to consider:

    • residence and citizenship are not hard to change
    • often what is view as personal wealth is nothing more than a bank loan guaranteed by the share in the company/companies, so basically the wealth is debt.
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