Norway’s richest had saved around NOK 2.6 billion. without wealth tax – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country

Salmon billionaire Inge Berg moves swiftly from the filleting factory to the slaughterhouse. The smell of sea and fish oil tears in the nose. At Nordlaks’ butchery at Stokmarknes in Vesterålen, thousands of salmon are bløgged, butchered and filleted every day. – The thing about salmon is that you can cook it, you can fry it and bake it in the oven. And eat it raw, says Berg. Last week he ate salmon for dinner three times, he can tell. The wife thought it was a bit too much, he says, laughing. His love of salmon has made him one of Norway’s richest men. It often blows up into a storm when the richest talk about wealth tax. Berg will still do that now. Inge Berg shows news around the Nordlaks factory in Stokmarknes in Nordland. Photo: Trude Furuly / news 2.6 billion in wealth tax Before he turned thirty, the Norwegian had founded Nordlaks. – This is a company that we have built stone by stone since we started in 1989, he says. The rest is a success story. Berg is in eleventh place among Norwegians with the highest wealth. He is worth over NOK 3.4 billion, according to the Tax Agency’s figures for 2022. These are the figures news has used in its calculations. Farmed salmon is a money machine for Inge Berg. Photo: Trude Furuly / news The Tax Agency calculates the wealth based on the assets Berg has, such as money in the bank, house and the value of the shares in his company. That gave him a wealth tax bill of 37.7 million in 2022, according to calculations made by news. Other personal tax amounted to NOK 7 million. Altogether, the wealth tax was then 84 per cent of what Berg paid in personal tax. This picture is typical for those with the highest assets in Norway. news has looked at how much wealth tax made up of what the 100 richest in Norway paid in personal tax in 2022: They paid NOK 3.5 billion in personal tax in 2022. Of this, wealth tax amounted to around NOK 2.6 billion. This means that wealth tax on average made up approximately 74 per cent of personal tax. news has only looked at one year. The amount paid in wealth tax varies from year to year. In the table below, news has calculated how much Norway’s 10 richest pay in wealth tax. news has been in contact with everyone on the list above. None of them wants to be interviewed. Berg is one of the few among Norway’s richest people who wants to talk to news. – We do not complain about paying taxes. That’s not what it’s about, says Berg. He believes that wealth tax is the most harmful tax, because it must be paid regardless of whether the company does well or poorly for a year. – The big problem with wealth tax is that it does not reflect a result or a profit, he says. Inge Berg thinks a higher corporation tax would have been better than keeping the wealth tax. Photo: Trude Furuly / news – Not a big problem Berg and most of Norway’s 100 richest own large companies. Do the business owners end up in a tight spot where they don’t have cash when the wealth tax has to be paid? A research group led by researcher Thor Olav Thoresen at Statistics Norway and the University of Oslo has investigated this. – Our surveys indicate that this is not a major problem for most business owners, says Thoresen. Researcher Thor Olav Thoresen at SSB. Photo: Terje Heiestad / UiO In the material, the researchers find that 99 per cent of business owners have a tax burden that was less than 3.5 per cent of the company’s profit. In other words, this supports the fact that most business owners have income from the companies with which to pay wealth tax, according to Thoresen. Professor: Lower wages The wealth tax causes companies to grow less and get lower profits, says economics professor Torfinn Harding at the University of Stavanger. – If you tax wealth, it becomes more expensive to have capital. Then there will be less capital, he explains. – It is easy to get upset that some of the richest would pay less in tax if the wealth tax disappears, but I think we have to think more broadly and smarter than that, says economics professor Torfinn Harding at the University of Stavanger. Photo: Øystein Otterdal / news Capital in a company can, for example, be machines that are necessary for employees to produce goods or services. When the business owners have to pay wealth tax, it becomes more expensive to have the machines, and this has ripple effects, explains the economics professor. – Then fewer machines will be available, and the workers will be less productive, and wages will be lower. We can also imagine that the companies will try to pay some of the tax by increasing their prices, he says. – Wealth tax absolutely central In total, Norway received NOK 26 billion in wealth tax in 2022. This means that the 100 richest accounted for almost 10 per cent of all wealth tax paid. Foreign owners of Norwegian companies do not pay wealth tax. – For the tax system’s redistributive function, wealth tax is absolutely central, says economic researcher and director Simen Markussen at the research institute Frischsenteret. Markussen believes the wealth tax has negative consequences, but still does not think it is more onerous than other taxes. – It is a tax that ensures that the richest pay a share of their wealth into the community, he says. Simen Markussen has researched the consequences of wealth tax. Photo: Ole Jørgen Kolstadbråten For the income year 2022, everyone who had a net worth of more than NOK 1.7 million had to pay wealth tax. This means that more than 623,000 people over the age of 17 living in Norway paid wealth tax in 2022, according to figures from Statistics Norway. Markussen believes that the limit for when you have to pay property tax should have been somewhat higher. – It will shield many people from paying wealth tax at all, he says. Disagree Economics professor Kjetil Storesletten at the University of Minnesota disagrees. He is critical of wealth tax because it must be paid regardless of income. But if it is to be paid first, he believes it should not only be the very richest. – It is very easy to argue that everyone else should pay more tax than you. Therefore, it is important that as many people as possible participate and both pay all taxes and benefit from the welfare state, he says. Professor at UiO Kjetil Storesletten believes that the very richest hardly have any problem paying wealth tax. Photo: Johan B. Sættem He believes that a wrong picture is drawn of what the richest pay in taxes. – I think it is unreasonable to only look at one year. The list shows that the richest did not pay very much in 2022, but the money the owners have earned through the companies will, of course, come into dividend tax when the money is taken out of the companies sooner or later, he says. He argues, among other things, that it varies from year to year in how much the business owners take in dividends. The more dividends are withdrawn, the more dividend tax must be paid. In a year where a lot of dividends are taken out, wealth tax will therefore constitute a lower proportion of personal tax. The tax system in Norway In Norway, both private individuals and companies pay tax. Roughly speaking, private individuals pay three taxes: income tax, dividend tax and wealth tax. Companies roughly pay corporation tax on their profits. Companies also pay taxes, including employer’s tax. The oil, power and farming industries also have ground rent tax. – Less left for investments In the sea gap outside Melbu in Vesterålen, Berg stands on the bow of “Nora”, a boat named after his first grandchild. With his helmet on, he is ready to climb aboard his biggest investment in recent years – the so-called sea farm. – Right now there are 6,500 tonnes of fish. So there is some value in what is here. The floating breeding facility is larger than the world’s largest warship and has cost several billion kroner to build and operate. According to Nordlaks, it has cost NOK 5 billion to build and operate Havfarmen. Photo: Trude Furuly / news Everything from the boat Nora, to the salmon that swims around and the huge steel structures in the sea farm are included in the calculations of the wealth tax. – The tax we have paid has certainly been within a reasonable level overall, says Berg. He says he would prefer a higher corporation tax, which reflects how the company has done. Nordlaks is a company that has experienced enormous growth over the years. In the vast majority of years, there has been enough money for Berg to pay the wealth tax. – We had one year where we were unable to take out a dividend. It was very demanding then. Then you had to borrow privately to pay wealth tax, he says. Since then, Berg has been more aggressive in extracting values ​​from the company in order to have a buffer to pay wealth tax. – This means that there will be less left for investments for the company, he explains. Berg invests in developing Nordlaks, but must withdraw assets from the company in order to have a buffer to pay wealth tax. Photo: Trude Furuly / news – Without wealth tax, you and many others with high wealth would have very little personal tax. What do you think about it? – I think that these are the things that you have to change, you have to look at other models and solutions so that you get a reasonable and sustainable tax. Flees from the wealth tax In recent years, several Norwegian rich people have moved to the tax haven of Switzerland. For the Treasury, the migration flow causes large losses every year. Foreign owners do not pay wealth tax on assets in Norway. Berg is critical of the differential treatment Norwegian and foreign owners receive. – It is clear that we feel a little bit that we are not treated equally with foreign owners. This company must take out NOK 200 million a year to be Norwegian-owned. At Nordlaks’ factory at Stokmarknes in Vesterålen, salmon is slaughtered and filleted from morning to evening. In total, over 800 people are employed in the company. Photo: Trude Furuly / news Berg says that he lost a lot of motivation when the basic rent tax and increased property tax came on the table. When asked if he has considered moving abroad, he replies: – You should never rule things out in life. But we have no plans or wishes to leave Norway to own a Norwegian company. It is completely pointless. Published 26.11.2024, at 15.58 Updated 26.11.2024, at 16.27



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