Recently, my story as a Norwegian entrepreneur facing an unrealized gains wealth tax bill many ties higher than my net income went viral, amassingover100 millionviewson X. A few years ago I publicly called out that this tax is both impossible-to-pay and nonsensical, but no politician would listen. So I made the difficult decision to leave my home country. I still don’t know how I was supposed to pay the tax, but I recently found myself plastered on the “Wall of Shame” at the Socialist Left Party’s offices.
In this post, I’ll delve into why there’s an entrepreneurial exodus from Norway, how we got here, and what the future might hold.
Socialist Left leader and me on the “Wall of Shame” (Dagbladet)
Norway: A real life Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged paints a vivid picture of a dystopian society where government overreach and socialist policies kill innovation and demonize entrepreneurs. In Rand’s world, working hard and taking risks is not celebrated, but looked at with suspicion. As the government tightens its grip, mandating how businesses should operate, the nation’s entrepreneurs begin to vanish and are nowhere to be found. People get poorer while the state keeps growing. Step by step the functioning of society starts to crumble. The trains first go off schedule, then start crashing and eventually stop going all together.
Present-day Norway mirrors this dystopia in unsettling ways. Taking risk with your own money, working hard and then making a profit is frowned upon. While politicians spending the people’s money on non-viable green projects, and delivering dysfunctional public services at high costs has the moral high ground. The government is spending 35 Billion NOK on offshore wind that industry experts think is financially unviable. This is about the same amount as the total wealth tax revenues. Norway spends 45% more than Sweden on health care per capita with approximately the same health outcomes. Norway has 2,5 times bigger share of the working population on sick leave than Denmark. Norway spends ~50% more than Finland on primary and secondary school with worse results.
With unshakeable ideological conviction, socialist politicians are rapidly undermining Norway’s wealth creation. They’re imposing taxes that explicitly disadvantage Norwegian business owners, and are often straight up impossible to pay. When confronted with the reality that you can’t pay taxes with money you don’t have—or that loss-making businesses can’t afford massive dividends just to cover owners’ wealth taxes—the response is vague moralism like “Those with the broadest shoulders must bear the heaviest burdens.” Any argument against any part of the system is by default invalid because there’s free health care…
Norway’s entrepreneurs are now indeed disappearing from society. In the past two years alone, a staggering 100 of Norway’s top 400 taxpayers, representing about 50% of that group’s wealth, have fled the country to protect their businesses.
Norwegian trains have for a long time been notoriously unreliable – even less reliable then in war time Ukraine! In chilling similarity to Atlas Shrugged there’ve been two train crashes, including one fatal, in the last month alone.
Tram crashing into a retail store in Oslo 29th of October 2024 (NRK)
The Unrealized Gains Wealth Tax: A Self-Inflicted Wound
Norway imposes a wealth tax that taxes unrealized gains at approximately 1% annually. Calculated on the full market value for publicly traded assets and the book value of private companies. On New Year’s Eve, whatever your net worth – including illiquid assets – is subject to this tax. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a loss-making startup with no cash flow, if your investments have tanked after the valuation date, or even if your company has gone bankrupt—you still owe the tax.
This creates a perverse scenario where business owners must extract dividends or sell shares every year just to cover their tax bill. With dividend and capital gains taxes at around 38%, you need to withdraw approximately 1.6 million NOK to pay a 1 million NOK wealth tax bill. You’re essentially paying taxes to pay taxes, draining capital from your business without any personal financial gain.
Moreover, the tax incentivizes Norwegians to take on excessive debt to reduce their taxable wealth, inflating housing prices and making the economy more fragile. While real estate and oil companies can mitigate this through debt financing, tech startups—often equity-financed and loss-making for years—are disproportionately harmed.
The Berlin Wall Exit Tax: Another Tax on Unrealized Gains
After witnessing a mass exodus of top taxpayers, the Norwegian government had a golden opportunity to reassess its policies. The wealth tax contributes less than 2% to the state budget; eliminating it and marginally increasing capital gains, corporate, or dividend taxes could have halted the entrepreneurial bleeding without affecting government budgets.
Instead, the government doubled down on what’s not working, introducing an exit tax on unrealized gains. Now, if you choose to move from Norway, you’re immediately liable to pay 38% of the total market value of your assets upon departure. It doesn’t matter if you have no liquidity, if your assets are high-risk and could plummet in value, or even if your company does fail after you leave—you still owe the tax. Previously, entrepreneurs could at least relocate if the wealth tax became too burdensome. Now, they’re incentivized to leave before they even start their businesses.
The government could have listened to the tornado of negative feedback and adjusted course, but instead, they doubled down on what’s not working. When the Berlin wall was created it was clear which side of the city had the better system… the one that didn’t have to build a wall to retain its citizens. Instead of trying to attract and retrain capital and talent by making Norway a better place for business the Norwegian government chose to build its very own Berlin Tax Wall with yet another tax on unrealized gains. Trapping not only entrepreneurs, but anyone with more than $270k of wealth wanting to move their life abroad for whatever reason…
The first 50 years: Well Managed Oil Wealth
Norway is one of the richest countries in the world. The government does not need to send their entrepreneurs abroad with non-sensical taxes. So you may ask yourself, “Well, how did we get here?”.
In fact, the oil wealth has been amazingly well managed by the politicians for almost half a century. In 1969, Norway struck oil—a discovery that could have led to the same resource curse that plagued other nations. Instead, Norwegian politicians made two genius decisions that benefited the entire population.
Genius Move 1: Taxing Oil Profits at 80%Recognizing the need for foreign expertise but unwilling to let international corporations reap all the benefits, Norway taxed oil company profits at a staggering 80%. This bold move ensured that the wealth generated from the oil benefited the Norwegian people.
Genius Move 2: Establishing the Sovereign Wealth FundIn the 1990s, Norwegian politicians understood that oil is a finite volatile resource and that it would be irresponsible to spend all the oil revenue on a running basis. In an act of rare political austerity and long term thinking they created the Oil Fund, to diversify and invest surplus revenues internationally. Furthermore the “Budgetary Rule” limited annual government spending from the fund to 3%, ensuring the fund in theory goes on forever.
For two decades, politicians across the spectrum adhered to this prudent financial management, displaying an impressive level of restraint and foresight rarely seen in politics.
How Oil Wealth Led to Socialist Ideology over Wealth Creation
But success bred complacency. In theory, everybody agrees that Norway needs new post-oil industries for the long term. In practice, the abundance of oil wealth has led to a detachment from the realities of how wealth and economic growth is created. While the Norwegian politicians impressively managed to restrain themselves for about half a century the current generation are now acting as if tax money grows on trees.
Ultimately that is the paradox that has caused the current situation: because the state has so much money, it is no longer at the mercy of businesses actually being created and staying in Norway. At least as long as the oil wealth lasts.
The 2025 Election: No Fundamental Solution in Sight
It seems likely there will be a new government after the 2025 elections, as the current government is seeing record-low support in the polls. Unfortunately, even seemingly business friendly opposition parties like the Conservative Party (Høyre) and the Liberals (Venstre) are not committed to abolishing the wealth tax entirely. They propose valuing companies zero for wealth tax purposes—a good step in the right direction, but not a fundamental solution to Norway’s ongoing crisis. Unfortunately The Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) is the only party that wants to remove the tax completely.
The wealth tax’s mere existence continues to create absurd incentives for excessive debt and over-investment in housing, detracting from more productive investments like stocks and startups. Moreover, the possibility of future governments reinstating the wealth tax for companies keeps the harmful uncertainty for businesses very much alive.
Many European countries have recognized the harm caused by taxing unrealized gains and abandoned it. Norway’s neighbor Sweden abolished its wealth tax in 2007. Since then they’ve seen its tech sector flourish. Spotify recently surpassed Norway’s state-owned oil company, Equinor, in market capitalization. In the last 15 years Norway has gone from having 7 to now only 2 of the Nordics top 30 most valuable companies.
Norway has produced four “unicorns”. Since then we the founders of Dune and Cognite have left due to the unreasonable taxes. Oda operates domestically in Norway. All founders have left the company and are wiped out. The last one Gelato is run by a swede that would likely move if they need to raise more money.
The Extra Long Journey to Post-Oil Wealth and Welfare
In Atlas Shrugged, the entrepreneurs refuse to return to society until the oppressive system collapses entirely. I sincerely hope Norway doesn’t have to endure such a downfall before entrepreneurs can return.
Fortunately Norway has a highly educated population and a lot of capital. With oil a high tech industry has been built in Norway before. What’s lacking is the political will to encourage entrepreneurship and big ambitions, not punish it.
Trust is built in millimeters and torn down in meters. In just a few years, the trust in Norway as a viable place to build and invest has been shattered. A whole generation of entrepreneurs has been lost.
The people of Norway currently enjoy and benefit from a host of generous welfare benefits. High income with short work days, free healthcare, free daycare, free education and beyond. For this to continue in the future Norway needs massive new post-oil industries. Due to the politicians’ series of unforced errors, the journey to get there will be extra long and painful. A definitive abolishment of all taxes on unrealized capital gains is the obvious first step.
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It’s now more than four years since the federal Liberal government pledged $30 billion in spending over five years for $10-per-day national child care, and more than three years since Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government signed a $13.2 billion deal with the federal government to deliver this child-care plan.
Not surprisingly, with massive government funding came massive government control. While demand for child care has increased due to the government subsidies and lower out-of-pocket costs for parents, the plan significantly restricts how child-care centres operate (including what items participating centres may purchase), and crucially, caps the proportion of government funds available to private for-profit providers.
What have families and taxpayers got for this enormous government effort? Widespread child-care shortages across Ontario.
For example, according to the City of Ottawa, the number of children (aged 0 to 5 years) on child-care waitlists has ballooned by more than 300 per cent since 2019, there are significant disparities in affordable child-care access “with nearly half of neighbourhoods underserved, and limited access in suburban and rural areas,” and families face “significantly higher” costs for before-and-after-school care for school-age children.
In addition, Ottawa families find the system “complex and difficult to navigate” and “fewer child care options exist for children with special needs.” And while 42 per cent of surveyed parents need flexible child care (weekends, evenings, part-time care), only one per cent of child-care centres offer these flexible options. These are clearly not encouraging statistics, and show that a government-knows-best approach does not properly anticipate the diverse needs of diverse families.
Moreover, according to the Peel Region’s 2025 pre-budget submission to the federal government (essentially, a list of asks and recommendations), it “has maximized its for-profit allocation, leaving 1,460 for-profit spaces on a waitlist.” In other words, families can’t access $10-per-day child care—the central promise of the plan—because the government has capped the number of for-profit centres.
Similarly, according to Halton Region’s pre-budget submission to the provincial government, “no additional families can be supported with affordable child care” because, under current provincial rules, government funding can only be used to reduce child-care fees for families already in the program.
And according to a March 2025 Oxford County report, the municipality is experiencing a shortage of child-care staff and access challenges for low-income families and children with special needs. The report includes a grim bureaucratic predication that “provincial expansion targets do not reflect anticipated child care demand.”
Child-care access is also a problem provincewide. In Stratford, which has a population of roughly 33,000, the municipal government reports that more than 1,000 children are on a child-care waitlist. Similarly in Port Colborne (population 20,000), the city’s chief administrative officer told city council in April 2025 there were almost 500 children on daycare waitlists at the beginning of the school term. As of the end of last year, Guelph and Wellington County reportedly had a total of 2,569 full-day child-care spaces for children up to age four, versus a waitlist of 4,559 children—in other words, nearly two times as many children on a waitlist compared to the number of child-care spaces.
More examples. In Prince Edward County, population around 26,000, there are more than 400 children waitlisted for licensed daycare. In Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton County, the child-care waitlist is about 1,500 children long and the average wait time is four years. And in St. Mary’s, there are more than 600 children waitlisted for child care, but in recent years town staff have only been able to move 25 to 30 children off the wait list annually.
The numbers speak for themselves. Massive government spending and control over child care has created havoc for Ontario families and made child-care access worse. This cannot be a surprise. Quebec’s child-care system has been largely government controlled for decades, with poor results. Why would Ontario be any different? And how long will Premier Ford allow this debacle to continue before he asks the new prime minister to rethink the child-care policy of his predecessor?
Canada caved to President Donald Trump demands by pulling its digital services tax hours before it was to go into effect on Monday.
Trump said Friday that he was ending all trade talks with Canada over the digital services tax, which he called a direct attack on the U.S. and American tech firms. The DST required foreign and domestic businesses to pay taxes on some revenue earned from engaging with online users in Canada.
“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” the president said. “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”
By Sunday, Canada relented in an effort to resume trade talks with the U.S., it’s largest trading partner.
“To support those negotiations, the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, announced today that Canada would rescind the Digital Services Tax (DST) in anticipation of a mutually beneficial comprehensive trade arrangement with the United States,” according to a statement from Canada’s Department of Finance.
Canada’s Department of Finance said that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Trump agreed to resume negotiations, aiming to reach a deal by July 21.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Monday that the digital services tax would hurt the U.S.
“Thank you Canada for removing your Digital Services Tax which was intended to stifle American innovation and would have been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America,” he wrote on X.
Earlier this month, the two nations seemed close to striking a deal.
Trump said he and Carney had different concepts for trade between the two neighboring countries during a meeting at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, in the Canadian Rockies.
Asked what was holding up a trade deal between the two nations at that time, Trump said they had different concepts for what that would look like.
“It’s not so much holding up, I think we have different concepts, I have a tariff concept, Mark has a different concept, which is something that some people like, but we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it today.”
Shortly after taking office in January, Trump hit Canada and Mexico with 25% tariffs for allowing fentanyl and migrants to cross their borders into the U.S. Trump later applied those 25% tariffs only to goods that fall outside the free-trade agreement between the three nations, called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Trump put a 10% tariff on non-USMCA compliant potash and energy products. A 50% tariff on aluminum and steel imports from all countries into the U.S. has been in effect since June 4. Trump also put a 25% tariff on all cars and trucks not built in the U.S.
Economists, businesses and some publicly traded companies have warned that tariffs could raise prices on a wide range of consumer products.
Trump has said he wants to use tariffs to restore manufacturing jobs lost to lower-wage countries in decades past, shift the tax burden away from U.S. families, and pay down the national debt.
A tariff is a tax on imported goods paid by the person or company that imports them. The importer can absorb the cost of the tariffs or try to pass the cost on to consumers through higher prices.
Trump’s tariffs give U.S.-produced goods a price advantage over imported goods, generating revenue for the federal government.
