[geysersam]

Not sure that's true. How do you even "consume" wealth, assuming the wealth is more significant than a few millions in the bank.

Nordic countries have high VAT but that's hardly going to hurt you.. On the other hand Sweden has less property tax than the US.

I guess if you consume services then that will be more expensive in the Nordics, since tax on salaries is high.

[coldtea]

>How do you even "consume" wealth, assuming the wealth is more significant than a few millions in the bank.

"A few millions in the bank" for hundreds of thousands or million of people would already make a nordic country the king of lesser inequality - unless (as the parent says, don't know it's true) it's tied up in company assets (and perhaps they use them as company perks even in one-person companies, to avoid the tax, thus masking better equality at the individual level).

[flakeoil]

I suppose the person means that you have to pay about 50% in taxes to take out the capital/profit from the company before you can use it as a private person.

[Y-bar]

Dividend and capital gains taxes are a flat 30% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden#Corporate_a...)

[pavlov]

In Finland the tax treatment for dividends is even friendlier.

If you have a 1.5M balance sheet, you can pay yourself 120k euros in dividends annually at an effective tax rate of only 7.5%.

Let’s just say that small businesses and professionals have very good lobbyists. An employee making 120k / year pays over 40% tax.

This creates a tremendous incentive for professionals to incorporate and use every trick in the books to build up a larger balance sheet on paper.

[hrududuu]

This type of comparison needs to add corporate income tax (20%) in order to be an apples to apples comparison,so 27.5. It's still a stark difference in taxation, and I know of no other country that does what Finland does for dividend taxation. In fact for earned income,things look even uglier when you add in tax-like social security contributions.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Finnish companies are also an outlier in paying extremely high dividends.

[olejorgenb]

In Norway it's 37.8%. Though you do get "skjermingsrente" (about the same rate as the central bank rate) on the amount you originally invested (ie.: not on any untaxed gains you've had).

[tossandthrow]

This is clever. In particular in inflationary times you are being taxed on non-real gains - this seems to alleviate that.

[flakeoil]

For stocks on the stock market, yes, but not if it is your own private company. Then the taxes are much higher.

[ath92]

That’s after corporate income tax of about 20%

[JumpCrisscross]

Plus 25% VAT when you spend it.

[Y-bar]

No, some things in Sweden are 0% VAT, others 6%, others 12%, and the rest 25%.

https://www.skatteverket.se/servicelankar/otherlanguages/eng...