(Norwegian) Trader blows €100m hole in Nasdaq’s Nordic power market

[luisHK]

Btw there's an article around stating Aas' declared income in 2016 and how much total taxes he paid, which amounted to around 25% (the article claimed it's total taxes, not sure about it, but much less than I thought, it's one of the first articles that come up when googling Einar Aas taxes)
Also googling the issue I don't find anymore Norway on top of the countries with the highest tax burdens (found it was 45% in 2012, there are several european countries in that range), but below is a comparison between US and Norway taxes, far from detailed though. Also found the tax burden in the US was 31.7% in 2016, quite a bit less:

https://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/comparing-tax-rates-in-the-us-and-norway.html

 

[Sig]

Btw there's an article around stating Aas' declared income in 2016 and how much total taxes he paid, which amounted to around 25% (the article claimed it's total taxes, not sure about it, but much less than I thought, it's one of the first articles that come up when googling Einar Aas taxes)
Also googling the issue I don't find anymore Norway on top of the countries with the highest tax burdens (found it was 45% in 2012, there are several european countries in that range), but below is a comparison between US and Norway taxes, far from detailed though. Also found the tax burden in the US was 31.7% in 2016, quite a bit less:

https://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/comparing-tax-rates-in-the-us-and-norway.html

Well like all attempts to oversimplify a complex subject, this article misses on a lot of fronts. First, it assumes it was all salary. Which it almost certainly wouldn't be in the U.S. and may or may not be in Norway. And when you reach that level there are a lot of special purpose entity setups you can do ex-U.S. that you can't do if you're a U.S. citizen that can significantly reduce your tax burden. And there there's the other taxes like VAT, which is probably higher in Norway than equivalent sales tax in the U.S. and property tax, no idea how that squares up. While not income tax, every entity that taxes uses a combination of all taxes to reach a certain revenue number which is what matters in the end, not just one arbitrary tax of many. And all that's before you look at how much the guy would pay for health insurance in the U.S. vice not paying in Norway and so on.

Top marginal tax rate is really a worthless number if you actually care about what you're paying out in taxes, much more useful to make political points in 30 second soundbites or 3 paragraph articles.

 

[luisHK]

Agree with everything you wrote, tax burden is better to compare 2 countries imo and when it comes to individual situations it gets way more complicated, considering the various set ups possible, and often not public.
Thought Norway and France had the highest tax burden, which I'd probably read somewhere, but it doesn't seem to be the case at the moment. Still, it's quite a bit more than the US tax burden.

 

[TraDaToR]

And there there's the other taxes like VAT, which is probably higher in Norway than equivalent sales tax in the U.S. and property tax, no idea how that squares up.

Are you talking about trading or corporates in general? VAT on capital gains( P&L)? Does that exist in some countries?

 

[Sig]

Are you talking about trading or corporates in general? VAT on capital gains( P&L)?

My point exactly. If you're talking about the tax burden on poor little Aas personally then we have to talk about his entire tax burden and the benefits he gets from it so you have to start talking about VAT and property tax and health insurance costs and ....
If you want to discuss corporate tax, well first off throw out the referenced article which doesn't talk about that at all. Then talk about the various entities a Norwegian could set up versus a U.S. citizen, then talk about the various pass-through entities versus double taxation a U.S. citizen could take advantage of...damn, we're back to talking about personal taxes aren't we because they're inextricably linked.
Bottom line is that any discussion that starts and ends with a top marginal tax rate is facile and will never be anything else.

 

[schweiz]

Largely funded by oil!

Exactly, they were so smart to put alot of "oil money" in that fund. Estimations are that there is enough money in the fund to secure the pension of the next 2 generations of Norwegians.