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Norway couch potatoes voting from home

One third of all voters in local elections in Norway has changed loyalties and will vote for another party after taking an online test of their views versus those of party candidates.

Published: 12 September 2011 13:55 CEST
Updated: 12 September 2011 16:51 CEST

Many of Norway’s news outlets have been sporting new valgautomater, or vote machines, with many claiming participants were changing parties after taking online tests of their views. Nearly a decade old, the electronic quizzes have become more convincing than ever.

Broadcaster NRK’s e-vote quiz starts by asking which municipality one lives in, and then asks what party one thinks one ought to vote for. It then asks how strongly you agree with political statements on 22 local issues and how important they are.

The results helped many vote online rather than visit public buildings with their election stations. Midnight Saturday marked the end of online voting.

“Most people say they like sitting in peace and calm at home when they vote and for example look up candidate lists from other parties (online),” said Radøy municipality’s e-vote overseer, Tove Thomassen, to newspaper Bergens Tidende.

“We are very satisfied that so many have voted electronically,” said Thomassen.

In addition to the e-tests of voter views, three-quarters of all early voting was registered online: 48-year-olds overtook 20-somethings to become the leading demographic to vote from laptops on sofas and office blocks.

Voters could also inspect an interactive, online map showing the state of their municipality’s finances, including scores for healthcare, schools, kindergartens, culture and costs.

Electronic vote counts appeared to temper predictions of political change in the capital, Oslo, and in the old German trading town of Bergen. In cosmopolitan Oslo, a Labour Party decimated this summer by a gunman’s murderous attack on its youth wing was seen benefiting from a wave of sympathy able to replace the well-ensconced and poll-leading Conservative Party candidate.

An electronic poll on Sunday by newspaper Aftenposten gave the coalition’s Socialist Left party 5.2 percent of the vote. The party’s political victories included edging government away from drilling for oil in the pristine Lofoten Islands, the right to daycare and a wealth tax on the country’s rich which in 2011 saw the wealthy taxed for the first time on their assets as well as their taxable income.

Party leader Kristin Halvorsen had served as finance minister in coalition with Labour and the agrarian Centre party.

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TAXES

Will Norway’s new exit tax slow the exodus of ultra-rich from the country?

You can check out -- but you still have to pay! Norway is looking for ways to hang onto its ultra-rich who are increasingly moving abroad to escape one of the rare European countries to impose a wealth tax.

Published: 24 May 2024 10:55 CEST
Will Norway's new exit tax slow the exodus of ultra-rich from the country?

Industrialist Kjell Inge Røkke, former cross-country ski legend Bjørn Dæhlie, and the father of football star Erling Haaland are among the dozens of super-wealthy who have packed up and left in recent years.

The reason? The centre-left government in power since 2021 has hiked the wealth tax from 0.85 percent to one percent — and to 1.1 percent for the very wealthiest — and raised the dividend tax.

Norway, Spain and Switzerland are the only European countries that have a tax on net wealth. In Norway it also applies to unrealised capital gains (gains not yet realised through the sale of shares, for example).

Owners of companies are among those hit hardest, often drawing a modest salary even though their company has a high value.

“If your salary is one million and you have to pay three million in (wealth) tax, it’s clear that it’s untenable,” said Tord Ueland Kolstad, a real estate magnate who “grudgingly” moved to Lucerne, Switzerland in 2022.

“The system is designed so that it confiscates more than what you can produce,” he said.

To pay a wealth tax which can exceed their yearly income, entrepreneurs often need to take out dividends, hampering their company’s capacity to invest.

And those dividends are also subject to a tax rate of 37.84 percent.

“So basically you have two options: either leave Norway, or sell your company,” said Kolstad.

‘Breach of the social contract’ 

Between 2021 and 2023, more than 100 of Norway’s wealthiest people went into exile, with the large majority relocating to Switzerland.

Others transferred their wealth to heirs already residing abroad, as Norway does not have inheritance tax.

Labour Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre has criticised the mini-exodus, stressing that taxes are what pay for Norway’s generous welfare system.

“When you’ve made your wealth in Norway, put your kids in school, benefitted from the health care system, driven on the roads and reaped the rewards of its research, it’s a breach of the social contract,” he said in a speech in parliament.

The government is now working to tighten the country’s “exit tax”.

People who move abroad would have 12 years to pay the exit tax — also 37.84 percent of gains made in Norway from shares and other sources over many years — that has until now been easy to circumvent or defer.

“The aim is that gains made in Norway be taxed in Norway,” explained Erlend Grimstad, a state secretary in the finance ministry.

“Our nurses and teachers have to hand over a large share of their earnings to society in the form of taxes,” he said.

“If they see that the most well-off can simply avoid contributing their share by leaving the country, that undermines the legitimacy of the tax system.”

‘Don’t come to Norway’

That does little to quell the anger of the ultra-rich.

Christer Dalsbøe, who started his own company, made buzz on social media recently singing a little ditty discouraging other entrepreneurs from starting businesses in the country.

“Don’t come to Norway, We will tax you till you’re poor. And when you have nothing left, We will tax you a little more,” he sang, sitting at a piano.

The liberal think tank Civita said the government’s plans to tighten the “exit tax” were in reality aimed at setting up roadblocks for millionaires and billionaires.

“Instead of attacking the reasons that push them into exile, meaning easing the tax burden on Norwegian shareholders, they seem to prefer to set up regulatory obstacles,” said Civita economist Mathilde Fasting.

In Lucerne, Tord Ueland Kolstad said he can receive “several calls a week” from other Norwegians considering moving to Switzerland.

“The flow has not stopped. Maybe it is just beginning.”

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