Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Labour Party, AP) has stated in recent TV debates that every third person who would receive a reduced wealth tax lives in the capital Oslo or in the country's richest municipality Bærum. He warns of uncertainty and rising interest rates.
Former Prime Minister Erna Solberg (Høyre) promises to reduce the wealth tax if she gets to form a government, and accuses the Støre government of attacking Norwegian companies.
It is a tax that foreign-owned companies avoid. Moreover, more bureaucracy has been introduced. New taxes. Temporary taxes. And retroactive taxes, she said in a speech recently according to NTB.
Two right-wing leaders
Residents of Norway who have assets with a net worth of at least 1.7 million kronor must pay 1 percent in wealth tax (and a bit more if the wealth exceeds 20 million).
The country is one of the few in Europe and the world at large that still has a pure wealth tax. It generates tax revenues of around 30 billion kronor annually.
On the political right, Høyre, traditionally the largest right-wing party, wants to abolish the wealth tax for "working capital" that has been invested in Norway-based companies.
But Erna Solberg's party is challenged within its own bloc, where Fremskrittspartiet (FRP) wants to abolish the tax altogether.
We abolished the inheritance tax the last time we were in government. Now it's time for us to also send the wealth tax to the scrapheap of history, said Sylvi Listhaug, party leader and also a potential prime minister candidate, at FRP's conference in the spring.
Looking across the middle
If the social democratic AP wins the election, they may still need to seek more support to the left, where parties like Sosialistisk Venstreparti want to increase the wealth tax for larger assets.
Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg (AP), formerly prime minister and NATO chief, is seeking a broader agreement across the bloc boundary. He is looking towards Høyre, which has not wanted to discuss it before the election.
We are willing to review all taxes, including the wealth tax, as part of the work on a comprehensive tax policy, Stoltenberg told TV2 last summer.
Wealth tax was introduced in many European countries during the first half of the 20th century, but was abolished in many places from the 1990s onwards.
Sweden had a wealth tax between 1911 and 2007. The income year 2006 was the last where the wealth tax was included in the tax return.
Persons with assets whose value exceeded 1.5 million kronor (3 million for couples) then paid 1.5 percent in wealth tax. For 2006, just over 284,000 people paid a total of approximately six billion kronor in wealth tax. This corresponded to just over 0.4 percent of Sweden's total tax revenues that year.
In Europe, a pure wealth tax still exists in Norway, Switzerland, and Spain. In countries such as Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, the model has been replaced with similar taxes that apply to specific assets, such as real estate of a certain value.
