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It is somewhat different: in your example, it’s just a matter of the taxation rate.

In Norway, it seems they were taxing paper gains: as an entrepreneur you take all the risk and put the effort to make your company succeed, maybe work with the smallest salary you can, so as to help your company grow more… then they come and say: “well on paper, if hypothetically you were to sell your company now, it would be worth X, so we are going to tax you on that.” …now to pay taxes you have to sell a chunk of your company, or find other ways to fund your tax bill, which is probably going to take away resources from growing your company, which probably means your company’s will grow less and hire less…

So people who are smart enough to start a successful company, are also smart enough to avoid Norway as a place to found it in.

There is a reason Norway, and by extension most of Europe, completely missed out on the tech boom, and all of Europe is just using American tech.

Such a shame, and Europeans still get offended when you point it out to them. Better to have stagnation than billionaires, amirite?

By the by, one of the people specifically pointed out in this article was apparently paying a total tax bill of 17 million dollars against a net worth of 2 billion, and whatever tiny increase in taxes he would've ended up paying was enough to make him flee the country.

If you can't bear to pay back even a tiny, tiny fraction of what you've been given then you shouldn't have it at all.

The people who are fleeing the country aren't just fleeing a specific rate of taxation. They are fleeing the idea that their wealth was, as you put it, simply given to them.

They are fleeing from people like you.

I blame the rich people a little bit for leaving. My fight or flight reflexes learn more towards the side of fight.

If the ultrarich keep doubling down on their antisocial behavior, they might not enjoy just how literally they'll have to "fight."

> If you can't bear to pay back even a tiny, tiny fraction of what you've been ~~given~~earned then you shouldn't have it at all.

FTFY

Money is earned when you lift crates for an hour and get $10 for it. 2 billion? Well, I can't imagine how many crates you'd have to lift to actually *earn* something like that.

Corporations are only allowed to exist with consent of the public. Break the social contract and get fucked at your own peril.

What happens if I lift crates for an hour, get $10, then lend that $10? I risked my hard earned money by lending it, have I "earned" the interest?

The article is misleading, and well propaganda. The official national statistical institute of Norway tracks wealth tax revenues per year. From 2022 to 2023, revenues moderately increased from around NOK 26 billion to NOK 29 billion.

I guess it becomes "is it worth it to pressure for more wealth redistribution" or "what stick can we pair with carrots to keep greedy capital from flying away"?

Like, if you relocate your headquarters from country X then country X nationalizes assets, or you are banned from operating in the country, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_tax

The question here becomes, can you somehow implement this in a way where nobody sees it coming (otherwise they will leave before implementation). It’s possible in a dictatorship, but not likely in a democracy. Especially since the wealthy have outsized influence in most democracies.

Best example: Oracle moved their HQ to Texas, then moved to Tennessee.

That wasn't the company I thought of initially but that's an even better example, as it involved two moves!

> I guess it's interesting to see who was expecting it.

I mean, we saw good results in Boston with a similar policy. It made more than expected, and millionaires didn't seem to leave.

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/politics/data-shows-mass-is-h...

> Another state got wind of that, and invited the company to move the headquarters there instead, with all kinds of tax breaks and credits and such.

This is not a good thing, IMO. It's a race to the bottom, where taxpayers lose.

(I also question the article quite a bit. The link in the line "Instead, individuals worth $54B left the country, leading to a lost $594M in yearly wealth tax revenue" looks like it should be a cite, but doesn't actually go anywhere except a page which reveals that this article is hosted by a company selling… Swiss citizenship.)

On the contrary, state level capital controls would be absurd. People and companies should be free to move to states that match their priorities.

> People and companies should be free to move to states that match their priorities.

That's fine! I object to states bribing those companies with taxpayer dollars in a silly zero-sum game where companies win and people get hosed.

Concrete example: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/after-wisconsins-foxconn-deb...

I think history will look positively on things like NYC opting out of the sleazy auction that was Amazon HQ2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_HQ2

Yes, the government shouldn't be trying to bribe companies or select groups of voters with handouts using taxpayer money.

The Massachusetts law is an income tax not a tax on wealth.