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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

Corporate tax rates are the same as other countries in Western Europe, and lower than the US.

Income taxes and payroll taxes are (significantly) higher though. Companies don’t need to leave the country but may want to hire top talent elsewhere if they need to keep taxes low.

For me as a Swede, keeping as little as half of my gross pay isn’t a big issue since I’m not required to pay for my kids higher education (or any education for that matter), nor do I need to save up a lot for retirement or future illness. But I can understand someone who wants to go to Sweden for a 5 year stint and needs to aggregate as much as possible because their kids will go to expensive schools etc. Moving to a high-tax high social security labor market can seem like a one way street in that regard.

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I think the biggest issue with Sweden is attracting talent.

Some issues:

Payouts for top talent are not great. Compared to US, you rarely get stock based comp or salaries higher than $80k/y and even then most of it goes to taxes. That is not unique with Sweden though, it's EU in general.

Second. The weather is not for everyone.

IMO that puts a cap in the potential growth as only the top companies can attract and pay the talent (Spotify Klarna, iZettle etc.).

The weather is definitely not for everyone. For the whole package to be attractive I think you need to weigh in the whole package with long holidays, parental leave, walkable cities, good work-life balance, cheap childcare and so on. It’s definitely not the place to go to work 3 years then buy a sports car. It’s a good place to go if you feel ready to switch a pay cut for a different style of life if you just had a couple of young kids perhaps.

> walkable cities

I know this is not what you meant, but I have a story about city walks for you:

Got lost and had to walk alone in downtown DC one late night. Made me decide to not take that job in NY and move back to Europe.

So if you had gotten lost in actual NY, say, in Greenwich Village or another tourist-friendly rich neighborhood, you would’ve stayed?

Well, you don't always get to choose the area you get lost in :)

Source: got lost in another country a month later. In a city with the highest homicide rate in the world.

Exactly my point.

This lifestyle suits a chill family life, not "Let's freaking build the next facebook and code 24/7".

I interviewed at somewhere that iZettle acqui-hired...salary terrible, no benefits, next-level bad interview process (they had someone from HR doing technical interviews, I asked why, the HR person actually said they didn't know). Almost every other local tech company, admittedly not a backwater, paid higher.

In my experience, generally, there isn't a straight read from "company you have heard about" to "has any clue what they are doing".

Proportionality does matter.

If it were merely a matter of 'a few points more' and you get 'this benefit' ... I think the argument would make sense.

But taxes in Sweden are something to almost choke on, they are extremely high. Not just high ... and I'm not quite sure that the benefits reflect quite how high taxes are.

The payroll taxes are enormous (almost as much as income tax) - and with elevated base + VAT it really makes a difference.

At 'higher income levels' - say at more than $150K USD equivalent, you're going to be paying over 60% in 'total taxes' - though much of that is 'hidden' in payroll taxes. And what you take home, you pay a further 25% on almost anything you consume.

So at upper income, but not necessarily 'rich' - you're approaching $30 in your pocket for every $100 earned, which is quite egregious.

Despite the obvious systematic benefits of many social programs, I don't think it's fair that we can assume some arbitrary levels of efficiency in that taxation. I really do feel the bulk of it boils down to redistribution for almost arbitrary public sector work.

I wish there was a happy place in between Texas and Stocholm on that, but I'm not sure what the answer is.

It’s not as bad as you make it sound; top marginal rate is 55% and you pay 30% tax on a decent/higher-end salary. Yes there are costs for the employer, but that’s the case in other places too.

A ~P75 software engineer can accumulate 1 MUSD within 15-16 years given 7% growth and decent city center living. <10 years for someone really good. Still, it’s not the US, but at least it’s possible.

"Yes there are costs for the employer, but that’s the case in other places too."

Yes payroll taxes are everywhere, but they are considerably higher in Sweden at ~30% in some brackets.

For average earners, France/Belgium are the highest, but for upper income earners, Sweden is the highest [1]

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/taxing-high-income-2019/

It can easily bite back. You rely heavily on the state, you bet your welfare on a hope that in 40 years time, there will still be enough cash flowing through the system to support you. Could work, but Sweden is not Norway with its sovereign fund.

Also, world is not binary as you describe it (high taxes&free education vs low taxes&costly education), there are tons of places which don't don't go mental on taxes like Sweden does, and still provide top notch free education.

Great for Sweden, would not be my top choice of residence and raising kids but its a good place nevertheless.

It’s funny that this meme of “Sweden has the worlds highest taxes” is prevailing when they in fact barely make the top 10 anymore.

I see what you mean but there isn’t really much choice under a high tax system. My payroll taxes means someone saves for me. If they screw it up I have some backup in private savings, but I don’t have any opportunity of not paying payroll taxes taking home a higher net. In the end I have to hope, but not assume, that the state manages my pension savings at least as well as I would personally. Making a high income and hoping to work to 70, it shouldn’t be a big issue to live after that anyway. The situation is worse for those that struggle to make it to even 65 without wearing out, and can’t put away a lot until then either (that is, blue collar)

>you bet your welfare on a hope that in 40 years time, there will still be enough cash flowing through the system to support you.

Yeah. Finland has a system similar to Sweden in many ways, in general it has worked great. Though during last decade or so without much economic growth and upside down demographic pyramid, some young people who follow the news have started to look at it with some suspicion. Current pension payments from our salary goes to current pensioners, but our retirement age is moving up and estimated future pension payments going down. Then in last year or two the birthrate dropped dramatically, and I updated from "concerned" to "heavily worried".

> > The article praises the Welfare State as the major stimulus for the startup environment, but then mentions that companies intend to leave Sweden... because of the high tax rate?

Yeah, the article mentions that Skype threatened to leave in 2016...

> Corporate tax rates are the same as other countries in Western Europe, and lower than the US.

...and it also mentions that they haven't actually left.

> Corporate tax rates are the same as other countries in Western Europe

Except for Ireland with its 12.5%

"12.5%"...there is relatively little evidence that tech companies are paying anything close to this rate (yes, after the loopholes were closed...still plenty of loopholes left).

Makes you feel the solution to the Brexit-induced problem with the Northern Ireland border is to kick Ireland out (if they don't shape up ASAP).

Why stop there? Kick out Poland and Belarus for being undemocratic, kick out the rest of Eastern Europe for being homophobic, and then kick out Greece and Italy for the unsustainable deficits — maybe Spain and Portugal, by that point, too.

> Kick out Poland and Belarus

You really shouldn't show off your ignorance like that.

Are you saying you haven’t seen the media express a concern that those two are becoming less democratic, or are you more concerned that my plan to kick out nations who don’t fall in line with the EU bureaucrats’ vision of the ideal economic and social policy is doomed to end in the dissolution of the bloc in a reductio ad absurdam?

Because if it’s the former I can find you lots of links, whereas if it’s the latter that’s merely the point.

https://ecfr.eu/article/for-europe-losing-britain-is-bad-kee...

https://amp.france24.com/en/live-news/20210501-human-rights-...

No, I'm saying it would be bloody hard to kick Belarus out of the EU, since it was never in it.

Ah! I'm sure we'll find a way.

As a non-EU foreigner, it only makes sense to move there if there's a clear naturalisation path.

I understand completely. If I were to move to SV it would feel like a temporary move to make more money for a period of time and then get out.

The equation moving to Sweden obviously isn’t the same. If you don’t intend to use the benefits (like childcare) taxes are very high compared to if they are offset by benfits. As a parent tech worker I feel like I’m having more money out than I’m paying at the moment.

It’s pretty easy (as far as I’m aware) to get permanent residency in Sweden as a professional.

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