Exit tax, Relocation tax | Swedish newspaper slaughters Trygve Slagsvold Vedum

The viral video of Christer Dalsbøe has reached abroad and the song which advises people to avoid Norway, is now shared in the leading position by Dagens Industri.

– The exit tax is the most extreme result of the owner-hostile Norwegian tax policy, writes lead writer Tobias Wikström with the title “Take warning from the Norwegian tax experiment”.

The warning comes a fortnight before the consultation deadline for the government’s proposal to tax paper assets if people move out of the country, and give the emigrants 12 years to pay the money.

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Hits startup companies hard

Dagens Industri has over 600,000 readers and is undoubtedly the most important and influential Swedish business newspaper.

In the lead, the newspaper concludes that the new exit tax proposed by Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum (Sp) will hit startup companies hard. The most serious point of appeal is that the exit tax must be paid from the share value at the time of moving out.

– Whether the company has shown a profit is irrelevant, as is the size of the turnover. The result is obviously that the owner who moves from Norway must sell shares in order to be able to pay the tax, Dagens Industri believes.

The warning goes particularly to the fact that startup companies often have foreign investors, entrepreneurs who move between countries and values ​​that can quickly rise and fall driven by expectations for the future.

Sweden takes a different path

While Norwegian owners who move out have to pay 38 percent tax on the calculated increase in paper value, Sweden has abolished both wealth tax and inheritance tax, and proposals to introduce an exit tax have so far fallen dead on the ground. Dagens Industri points out that even the Swedish Social Democrats do not want to reintroduce a wealth tax that drove owners out of the country.

– Since owner taxation was improved in Sweden, capital has moved back. Owners could move back home. The startup scene has flourished in the past ten years, writes Dagens Industri.

– But the example of Norway shows that you cannot take anything for granted if the left comes to power, believes the editorial writer, and points out that it is the sister parties of the Swedish Social Democrats and the Center Party that have introduced the exit tax and kept the wealth tax in Norway.