DEBATE
We react strongly to what we perceive as a lack of business understanding from Labor politician Torbjørn Vereide.
MISUNDERSTANDING: Talking about entrepreneurs hiding business assets in holding companies is at best a misunderstanding, writes deputy managing director of NHO, Anniken Hauglie. Photo: Stian Lysberg Solum / NTB
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External comments: This is a discussion article. Analysis and point of view are the writer’s own.
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Published
Monday 01 August 2022 – 09:34
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Although the summer can also be hot in Gloppen, we had expected that Labor politician Torbjørn Vereide would have adopted a more honest attitude towards the business world than what he wears to the market in his article in Dagbladet on Monday 25 July. We react strongly to what we perceive as a lack of nutritional understanding.
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Vereide seems namely to believe that the more tax a business owner pays, the more jobs are created. He apparently also lives in the belief that business owners do not contribute to society by paying taxes and fees. The so-called “business wealth” serves no other purpose than to make the super-rich even more super-rich, is the mantra. Therefore, it should be taxed more heavily, he seems to think.
To talk about entrepreneurs hiding business assets in holding companies, and that this is about tax planning, is at best a misunderstanding of what it is about for companies. Depriving companies of capital does not ensure any jobs, nor does it stimulate growth and development in rural and urban areas.
Civita misses the riches tax
We might be able to recommend Vereide to take a trip to a business in his local area to hear what they think about his plan and about what the government’s increase in the tax burden means for their growth and development. We do not believe that the answer he gets is a result of the owner having reached so far down the cognac glass, as Vereide expresses himself in Dagbladet.
Torbjørn Vereide wrote that we now need a major redistribution in the tax system, and that Ap alt is doing exactly that by having increased the wealth tax, increased the dividend tax and increased the step tax for the top step. Yes, there is no lack of action and ambition to increase taxation, but for us it is mostly about looking after the many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who actually feel the tax burden on their bodies.
Want a ban
Vereide should know that the vast majority of companies in Norway are SMEs, and it would be highly relevant to ask them before going to ideologically justified tightening of e.g. the wealth tax. Those who run the small and medium-sized businesses probably do not recognize themselves in the characteristic “the richest” either. They are often quite ordinary people in villages and towns, who participate in the local communities on an equal basis with their employees. Very few of them can be called “wealthy”.
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