Norway Shrugged

Norwegian entrepreneurs face a 1% annual wealth tax on unrealized gains, forcing owners of loss-making or bankrupt companies to extract dividends or sell assets each year to meet the bill. In the past two years, 100 of the country’s top 400 taxpayers—about half of that group’s wealth—have left Norway, citing impossible-to-pay taxes and costly, ineffective public spending on projects such as offshore wind and health care.