[klunger]

My department (at a Norwegian university) is working on a headhunting plan. The way the ERC grants are structured, the applicant needs a sponsoring institute. So, we are identifying researchers who are working on relevant topics, if we think it will be a good fit (and/or if we have successfully collaborated with them in the past).

Some of the details are still being ironed out. The beauracracy is real! Even so, I guess the first emails will go out late next week.

[kgdiem]

How do you think that Norway’s wealth tax could impact its ability to draw talent from any other country? Knowing that, should you develop anything (drug, material, etc) and want to spin it out to a startup, you will be taxed on the unrealized valuation would weigh very heavily on me were I a researcher.

Full disclosure, I know that this isn’t everyone’s goal, but this is HN after all!

[cherry_tree]

“I want to contribute to society, but if I earn more than X Millions of dollars 1% of my wealth will be taxed”

I guess don’t try to contribute to society then.

What you are describing isnt a hacker mentality, it’s one of an MBA graduate whose sole purpose in life is to maximize their own wealth. The idea that such a mentality is linked to this forum shows how far hacker culture has fallen and is deeply sad.

[kgdiem]

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!

[NorwegianDude]

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.

[kgdiem]

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.

[nextos]

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.

[kgdiem]

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

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

[cherry_tree]

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

[const_cast]

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.

[kgdiem]

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.

[const_cast]

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.

[gibusen]

hacker culture =/= martyr culture. I fundamentally disagree with the central premise of your entire perspective.

Society is not entitled to value. If you have the skills to create value for others, then you will inevitably have to use capital to actually scale it. In the process, through voluntary transactions, that enterprise might profit and grow - creating more value for others in the process. The question is really: who profits? I think your perspective is exceedingly misplaced in that, by necessity, it intrinsically hands control of each new innovation to said MBA-types. If a society drafts policies that make it extremely difficult to take control of your own innovation and scale it according to your own wishes, then you are implicitly leaving that work to others who (more often than not) will not share your philosophies. If a society wants to enact policies that make it difficult for a person to take ownership over their own innovations, then they should not be shocked when it becomes extremely difficult to appeal to innovators in the first place. Instead of realizing that the commentor wants to take command of the destiny of their innovations, you go down this peculiar moralizing argument that's orthogonal to their entire point. How do you know they haven't created more value for society than you have, and why are you so comfortable demanding the nature of that value creation happen on your terms?

Also, this forum is managed by a VC firm. They explicitly support people taking charge of their own creations and scaling that to society. People are allowed to ask if a society has created legitimate bottlenecks to accomplishing that.

[klunger]

Well, with this ERC fund, we are trying to attract high quality research scientists. While there are many of these who also have entrepreneurial ambitions, it is a venn diagram, not a circle.

However, your critique of the wealth tax on unrealized gains is a big problem more generally. I have some interaction with the startup ecosystem these days here. Anecdotally, I have seen several founders choose to incorporate elsewhere in Europe or the US because of it. Unfortunately, it's incredibly hard to quantify how many do not stay here because of it.

This aspect of the tax has had significant opposition for years, but nothing ever seems to come from it.

Opposition to tax on realized gains/assets is less vocal. Someone else here characterized that part as similar to property taxes in the US and I think that is fairly accurate.

Details on what is taxed how much, if you are interesed: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/taxes/get-the-taxes-ri...

ETA: we are looking for evolutionary biologists. Not many entrepreneurial personalities here, more like a lot of bird watchers (I say this lovingly). Over in the groups with translation potential is a different story of course.

[kgdiem]

Totally makes sense! Thanks for the thoughtful answer.

> ETA: we are looking for evolutionary biologists. Not many entrepreneurial personalities here, more like a lot of bird watchers

In this case I’m sure that I’d be tempted to come to Norway and learn how ø is pronounced.