The threshold for Norway's wealth tax is having a total net worth around 150,000 euros, regardless of income. That should affect pretty much everyone who's owned a house for more than a decade.

Is this meant to say 1,500,000 euros? 150,000 euros is ~$175k USD and the average US home price is currently sitting around $500k for reference.

edit: it does appear that 150,000 is correct, but it is an additional 0.1% tax on wealth above 150,000 euros.

Still basically nothing for the overwhelming majority of people. An additional $1,000 a year for every $1,000,000 you are worth.

Wealth tax on houses (and apartments, cabins etc..) are calculated as 25% of market value up to 10 MNOK and 70% over that. So you'd need to own a rather luxurious house before having to pay a rather modest tax.

Some municipalities also have a separate property tax which iirc is usually an order of magnitude lower than the wealth tax.

Buying a house is actually a simple way to avoid the wealth tax.

If you've owned a house for a decade you typically have like 15 or 20 years left on your mortgage and are in debt. The tax worth of the house is some fraction of the sale price, so for a house that one might sell today for €500k the tax value could be like €50k. At the same time, typical debt after only ten years is probably almost half the house price (assuming you had some savings before buying the house). And with debt, that's what your earnings go to... I as an above-median earning Norwegian with house (and thus very negative worth) will probably have decades before getting anywhere near the threshold. And even then you only pay for what's over the threshold, so if you're At the threshold you pay nothing.