Scandinavium #13: Knee-deep in skatt

{303 words, 2 minutes}

I thought Norwegian taxes were pretty nice: basically two pages, pre-filled numbers. Simply edit or correct any mistakes, unreported deductions (yay for -10% taxable income deduction for foreign workers for the first two years), changes in life status, etc., and submit to get money back in a few months.

That is until I found out that I have to report every penny of every balance, interest gained, and dividend received for all of my U.S. savings, checking, and brokerage accounts. Converted into Norwegian kroner, of course. As a bonus, every part of my Norwegian tax return is in English except Form Attachment RF-1059. I may actually be in over my head enough to warrant getting advice from a tax professional …

RF-1059 exists because Norway has a small tax on wealth (0.15% to the state and an additional 0.7% to the local municipality) known as "formueskatt" (formue = fortune, skatt = tax). Wealth, as in your "net worth", as in the value of all your bank balances, your house, your car, your funds and investments, and literally anything else of significant, monetary value when the total value exceeds 1,480,000 NOK (about $185,000 USD) for single-filers, doubled for married. There are some weighting factors; for example, only 25% of the market value of your primary home is used for wealth-tax counting purposes. Coming from America, this is mind-boggling, but as you can tell, I'm still learning a lot about what this wealth tax exactly is and even more so, its socioeconomic influence on Norwegians.

Oh, and I have to correct last year's tax return because I didn't know I had to do this. There are 10 years of tax amnesty for reporting foreign wealth, but at this point, I'm not sure I'm actually thankful for that. I think I'd rather spend a day in jail; the time spent is probably close to parity.