TrackerFF sounds like someone on the left trying to defend the wealth tax. As a Norwegian who believes in freedom and the right for anyone to start their own business, I think the wealth tax is one of the most toxic taxes ever introduced. In practice, it makes Norwegian-owned companies about 30% less competitive than foreign-owned ones.

It’s sold as a “tax on the rich,” but in reality it’s a 2.1% annual tax on businesses. The companies have to cover these costs, and the result is that everyone — rich or poor — ends up paying for it. The only winner here is the state, which wastes the money on useless projects and subsidies.

It gets even dumber: businesses that invest in emergency preparedness — like storing gravel or materials for war or disaster scenarios — actually get punished by the wealth tax. Imagine paying 2.1% tax every year on a gravel pile. No, this is not a joke: link: https://www.dn.no/innlegg/beredskap/sikkerhetspolitikk/formu...

The consequences are clear: more than half of the 400 wealthiest people in Norway have already left the country. There’s no risk capital left for startups, and outside the oil and gas sector, businesses are struggling. Plenty of smart young engineers fresh out of university can’t find work, and hiring of junior software developers has basically stopped.

When we talk about taxes, we should be talking about incentives and motivation. If you tax people so hard that they lose the drive to work and create, then you’ve got a real problem.

If I had the chance, I’d move to Sweden or Switzerland immediately. But I can’t, because I’ve got a family to take care of here.

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triceratops 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The only winner here is the state, which wastes the money on useless projects and subsidies.

They should use that to reduce other taxes instead. Especially income taxes.

> If you tax people so hard that they lose the drive to work and create

That a bigger problem for income taxes. If the top marginal rate is over 40% people will prefer chilling out instead of working hard for the next promotion.

> more than half of the 400 wealthiest people in Norway have already left the country

Did they take their money too? And their factories and land and patents and other assets? Does it matter that they're not physically present in the country?

> There’s no risk capital left for startups

Was Norway previously known for having a lot of capital for startups? I thought Europe was generally bad for startup funding.

> hiring of junior software developers has basically stopped

You've described the entire world in 2025.

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gruez 5 hours ago | parent [-]

>Did they take their money too? And their factories and land and patents and other assets? Does it matter that they're not physically present in the country?

The better question is the impact on future investment. Once a factory is in place, it's a sunk cost and it won't make sense to move it unless the political situation is dire. The same can't be said for investments that haven't been made yet.

> I thought Europe was generally bad for startup funding.

I wonder why that'd be the case...

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triceratops 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> The same can't be said for investments that haven't been made yet.

We can debate counterfactuals all day long. People invest when there are profits to be made and refrain when there aren't. Everything else is bullshit.

> I wonder why that'd be the case...

Definitely not wealth taxes because most European countries don't have them. It might be because they don't have the world's reserve currency. Or the million other reasons commentators and economists have written about elsewhere.

	▲	gruez 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>We can debate counterfactuals all day long. It's not really a counterfactual. My point was that deployed capital is less subject to flight, so using that as a measure for a policy's impact is incomplete and short sighted. >People invest when there are profits to be made and refrain when there aren't. Everything else is bullshit. This is also incomplete. People also seek the highest returns. That's why the magnificent 7 tech companies (which happen to be all American) have seen their valuations skyrocket, whereas the appetite for Volkswagen is tepid, despite it turning a profit. That's not to say there's no investment in Europe, but based on startup funding and IPOs, it's pretty clear that the US is the favored place to invest. >Definitely not wealth taxes because most European countries don't have them. My point is that europe is generally business-hostile. Wealth taxes is only one of the factors. There's also high taxes and onerous regulations.

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7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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pcrh 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The negative impact of wealth taxes is vastly over-stated.

Obviously the impact depends on the level of taxation, but it is instructive to compare it with inflation. Typical wealth taxes are in the region of 1% per year; a 1% (additional) annual rate of inflation would have the same impact on wealth as the tax and not be considered disastrous for any business except those with very marginal profitability.

	▲	gruez 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>Typical wealth taxes are in the region of 1% per year; a 1% (additional) annual rate of inflation would have the same impact on wealth as the tax Or to put it another way: a 50% rise in the "normal" level of inflation (assuming 2% target that most countries target). Moreover this is a bad comparison because most rich people don't keep their wealth in cash, they invest it which mostly shields it from inflation. You end up overstating the current costs that capital owners are paying.