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Comment by kgdiem | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that the wealth tax is based on your assets. 51% ownership of your $10M early stage startup is $5.1M in wealth, not a liquid asset. Nevertheless, you will owe $51k/yr to the Norwegian government.

If you raise a second round at $15M, next year you owe $76k, so on. This creates an impossible situation for a founder of, let’s say, a fission reactor startup.

I could be wrong also, I was curious to hear a real life Norwegian’s thought about it.

A system like this only serves entrenched interests, not entrepreneurs or workers. Want to make a life saving drug? Have to sell off ownership of your company or use runway to pay taxes on something that could be absolutely worthless in the end or wind up losing control. Better off selling to Novonordisk!

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I dont like the wealth tax, but your numbers are not accurate. There is a discount and deductions on the wealth tax, but after the last election the discount has been reduced drastically.

It's not normally a very large issue, but I really don't like it. Most companies on the exchange makes money, and those who are not on the exchange are taxed on their assets. So in most cases it works out, but not always.

Usually owners use dividends to withdraw money to pay the tax, but that means even more tax as you have to pay tax on the dividends too.

The right side wants to remove the tax on investments, and maybe compensate by increasing the corporate tax. That way the tax on the annual result will be a bit higher, but there will be no wealth tax. This also levels the playing ground when it comes to Norwegian and foreign investors as the tax won't be based on where the owner is from.

Gotcha! I did a 2 second google to illustrate what I was trying to ask in my original question about someone trying to recruit researchers. I did a ChatGPT query to see what my hypothetical would be and it quoted ~$44,880 USD, not taking it as gospel though.

I have worked at startups and got some worthless equity. I've also launched some (small) things on my own and am very interested in building large things, raising some money, etc.

Given OOP is actively recruiting I'm really just curious how this could effect your/their/someone in or interested in Norway's thinking when they could go anywhere in the EU or from TFA, remain in the US.

True, Switzerland and Denmark had the same problem but they are fixing their unrealized gains tax regulations.

The Draghi Report on EU Competitiveness raised lots of these red flags and, at last, some politicians are listening. Still, too little and too late.

Thanks for that! I’ve not heard of the Draghi report.

https://commission.europa.eu/topics/eu-competitiveness/dragh...

No the problem is you have built nothing and are already imagining yourself on a pile of gold complaining about taxes.

The US has a wealth tax that predominantly affects the middle class - property taxes. In some states, like mine, it can be 10K+ a year for a typical home!

It doesn't really discourage people from building their wealth and buying homes. It does a tiny bit - I've heard people say they rent to avoid property taxes. But barely.

So, if the middle class who do not have a lot of wealth can deal with it, I would imagine the wealthy can, too. Or, maybe they can't, because they have so much more mobility.

I see your point and it is similar when you consider a profitable company but think it is different from startup equity because you are raising capital you’re assigning a speculative dollar amount to build the business.

The only difference, really, is that housing as a market is just significantly less volatile. But in essence it's the same - you may pay property taxes on a valuation of 700,000 dollars but next week your house is only worth 100,000. That would be extremely rare, but it's possible.

On the other hand, valuations for startups and even some large companies like Tesla seem to have absolutely no relation to the actual value of the company. Whereas home appraisals are, generally, based on the actual value as calculated by real metrics - like square footage and zipcode.

So, maybe it's just easier to deduce the value of a home, I don't know. Or maybe the stock market is just too irrational. Part of me wonders if the stock market is so irrational because there's no wealth tax.

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