For the median wealth somewhat house price driven although there’s also the reality that median and mean wealth in Australia is remarkably close together. You can’t have median wealth driven by home equity if no one has a house yet in australia the median and say top 25% have remarkably similar houses.

So yes they are high but it’s not like the disparity in the USA where the median is well below Australia (lot’s of people in the USA lost wealth in 2008 and never recovered) while the mean is well above (driven by the few that are extremely wealthy living a lifestyle unattainable to the commoners).

I future-proofed myself by moving to a region with a €3M exception. So that I have a long way to go before paying wealth tax.

CGT is progressive and around 20%, compared to other European countries that is fairly average. Some Eastern European countries are at 15%, Belgian is going to 10%, Switzerland differs per canton.

Also, no CGT for fresh immigrants if you are able to use the Beckham law.

No, that's not ok.

Many years ago, a friend of mine in the Netherlands had the same job as another guy, earning the same money, my friend being extremely thrifty, the other guy splurging. When they both found themselves out of a job at the same time, my friend got no support from the government as he had savings, while the other guy started getting a very generous allowance.

This goes directly against all that is reasonable. This is directly discouraging financial responsibility. My friend is thrifty just for the sake of it, he knows it's not in his interest. But he gets the short end.

That is the current system. In the new system it will be 36% on all capital gains, no more assumed gains. And an €1800 a year tax-free threshold.

Also it's a bit more, right now you are looking at 36% on 6% or 2.16% per year with a €59k threshold. So a bit over €20k a year on that €1M.

Why is this shocking? Surely if you hadn’t grown up with the very technical idea of unrealized gains, this would seem totally normal. The surprising thing is that we let ourselves be convinced in the past that making money with money should be tax advantaged compared to making money with labor.

Unrealized gains are gains.

Yes.

Say you have €80k in investments. Markets go up, in one year time your investments are worth €90k. You did not sell.

That means you had €10k in unrealized capital gains. Subtract the €1800 per person threshold. €8200, 36% tax is €2952 tax to be paid at the start of the year.

Losses give you tax credits redeemable against future capital gains (not against income tax from employment)

In the process of setting up a company to do consultancy services for Dutch companies, but eventually want to shift to local companies once I get to learn the language, culture and business.