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I am an American who has lived in Norway for several years. I have to deal with this crap every year and, when the time comes to choose between passports, I am

• hessenwolf 12y ago
  Oooh... Irish taxes are like that too! I miss it. German taxes, on the other hand...
  • tormeh 12y ago
    How bad are the German tax forms? I'm considering moving there. Is it just that you have to do it by hand, or are they more complicated as well?
    • oldspiceman 12y ago
      How could Germany have an inefficient tax filing program? That doesn't make any sense. Please explain somebody
      • tormeh 12y ago
        Oh boy, you have clearly never encountered the German bureaucracy. I know it was meant as a joke, but it won't be so funny once you get in the habit of carrying a document folder with you with all the documentation you have for every bureaucracy encounter. The one redeeming quality is that everything is always properly done.
      • hessenwolf 12y ago
        Germany as a collective may seem efficient. Germany on an individual basis is... well, a whole lot of work I never considered before moving here. Good luck to you. Also, there kinda isn't one Germany. Mittelstand vs Megacorp and different cities are all very different.
    • bosie 12y ago
      If you are employed you don't have to touch tax forms.
    • probably_wrong 12y ago
      I'm a PhD student, so of course your mileage may vary, but at the end of the year I have two options: I can accept that whatever the government deducted from my salary was correct (and do nothing else), or I can fill a form if I think I should be getting money in return. I know that the special cases (foreign income, family outside the country and so on) are a bit more complex, though.
    • hessenwolf 12y ago
      The story is that you can usually get money back by filing your taxes. To file your taxes, you buy this year's software, and block off a straight weekend to enter the data. Or you pay an accountant, who will as likely as not royally bodge it, potentially illegally. I have been ignoring the problem.
  • CalRobert 12y ago
    I had to ask about 5 people "wait, so I REALLY don't have to file taxes?? Seriously?" after I moved to Ireland before it really sank in. The answer is no, and if you need to change your tax situation (for instance, if you get married) a simple email to your local PAYE office will often suffice. I email DubNorthCityPAYE@revenue.ie and usually get a response within a few days. Of course, the sad thing is that I actually DO still have to file taxes. To the US.
• coldcode 12y ago
  Sound nice except for the being frozen part :-) The IRS could do our taxes as well if there weren't 500,000 special interest exceptions to everything.
  • zem 12y ago
    they could probably do it anyway, but intuit lobbied against it: http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-g...
    • toomuchtodo 12y ago
      The lobbying by Intuit that prevents us from having first-world taxing bodies makes my blood boil.
      • theklub 12y ago
        We need a "lobby for the common people" fund.
        • crimsonalucard 12y ago
          The irony of this statement is that the entire US government itself was formed on a similar premise.
          • oldspiceman 12y ago
            "government of the people, by the people, for the people" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address
        • teddyh 12y ago
          Those are called “taxes”. In theory.
      • humanrebar 12y ago
• credo 12y ago
  >>The other awesome thing about Norwegian taxes is that the government does it for you. The US has also attempted to do this. However, every attempt has been killed by corporate interests (like Intuit) and politicians (mostly Republicans) and special-interest-groups (conservative anti-tax organizations) The latter claim that the government shouldn't automatically create a form with all taxes done because the government will not try to minimize citizen tax payments (and most people will check the 'OK' button without reviewing their taxes to see if they can get additional deductions). In reality, I think that most anti-tax organizations realize that they'll lose a significant portion of their support if filing taxes becomes easy. In the case of companies like Intuit, the motives are obviously transparent.
  • jseliger 12y ago
    The US has also attempted to do this. However, every attempt has been killed by corporate interests (like Intuit) and politicians (mostly Republicans) and special-interest-groups (conservative anti-tax organizations) This may be true, but I downvoted your comment because I don't see any sources for the strongly worded assertions made.
    • jellicle 12y ago
      If we downvoted every assertion on HN that didn't come with a complete annotated appendix of sources, that would be every comment. Why do you apply this standard to this comment, and not to others? A googling of something like "intuit lobby irs" will turn up as much info as you care to have about the situation, incidentally.
  • dkopi 12y ago
    This isn't such a far fetched claim. In Israel for example - you get taxes deducted from your pay check every month, directly by your employer, based on the assumption that will be your constant salary for the rest of the year. Now lets say you get fired in September, lowering your annual salary and bringing you into a lower tax bracket - unless you personally file for a return at the end of the year, the government feels no obligation to return the taxes you've overpaid.
• moron4hire 12y ago
  I'm hoping people will start to realize this more over time. The taxes we pay in the United States are not that low, not when you start talking about the lack of social services we have and compare that to other countries with far more comprehensive programs. I have some Canadian friends who were shocked to learn I pay more taxes than they do. Well, of course, they were also shocked to learn I had health insurance at all, but that's a different story. High taxes. Long wars that promise to only get longer. Lack of meaningful industry regulations. For what? What is it getting us? It's not like we're getting free tuition out of it, or even reasonably cheap tuition. It's not like we're getting more land and resources--and freedums, I seem to have a lot fewer of those these days, and it weren't no Al Qaida that done took 'em from me. We aren't getting cheaper products with more innovative features. Republicrats and Demicans can argue all day about what change is needed, and we've only ended up with the worst of both sides of the aisle. We'd be a lot better off with the whole program of one system, even if it was the system I didn't agree with.
  • rqebmm 12y ago
    >Republicrats and Demicans My boss goes with the phrase "Republi-cons and Demo-rats" which I was always a fan of.
  • davidw 12y ago
    > We aren't getting cheaper products with more innovative features I have a paperback sized device that can download thousands upon thousands of books pretty much anywhere I am. I think it's nothing short of incredible! And the battery lasts for several weeks at a go, to boot. Your comments about taxes are fairly accurate, but the above surprised me some.
    • moron4hire 12y ago
      I think that happened despite the entrenched business interests who both used government subsidy to get going, then have fought regulation tooth and nail to be able to gouge the customer. Remember, Apple had tried to do a phone before the iPhone. And they listened to the wireless providers about what it should be, and it was awful.
• seizethecheese 12y ago
  It doesn't hurt that Oil accounts for 30% of Norwegian government revenue[1]. Of course you experience higher services at a similar tax burden. 1: http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21570842-oil-makes-norway-different-rest-region-only-up-point-rich http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21570842-oil-ma...)
  • troels 12y ago
    I'm sure it helps, but we have mostly the same situation in the rest of Scandinavia and that's without any oil.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • emn13 12y ago
    Let's be honest here: the real issue is bureaucracy, not the actual tax bill. Whether taxes are higher or lower; whether they're on income, consumption or corporations - unless there's some really dramatic difference, it's all a bit of a wash. Cost of living to some degree reflects what people actually can afford because that's what suppliers can get away with. The stress and time wasted to comply with pointless regulations (ala IRS) likely affects your quality of life more than a few numbers on a balance sheet that are likely compensated by living costs.
  • tormeh 12y ago
    95% of that is put into the Government Pension Fund Global (colloquially the Oil Fund) which, contrary to its name, is not used for pensions. It just sits there, and together with the actual Norwegian pension fund it's the largest sovereign fund in the world. The Oil Fund holds 857.1 billion USD. The reason for the arrangement is to control inflation and avoid the dutch disease. Norway is not Saudi Arabia, in other words. The part that worries me is not oil's contribution to the government balance, but its outsized share of private enterprise, especially technology.
    • seizethecheese 12y ago
      4% of the entire fund gets paid out each year. Nobody claims that the Harvard endowment isn't a boon to Harvard just because they stick most of their large donations there instead of spending them immediately.
• nostromo 12y ago
  > You pay taxes that are not much higher than in the US and actually get things in return This is what bothers me the most about the U.S. Federal Government. Most of the things I enjoy in the U.S. are provided by my city, county and state. Things like courts and fire protection and cops and roads and schools and water and sewage systems and electricity and parks. And what's amazing about all that is I don't pay very much for it. States and cities seem to be able to really stretch our tax dollars. I pay a lot more into the federal government and in return I get interstates (which are awesome) and the TSA at airports and borders. Other than that, I don't really have many tangible interactions with the federal government at all. This was made very obvious during the shutdown, which I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been reading the news. It seems to be largely a money pit.
  • johnchristopher 12y ago
    Bear with me as I don't live in the US but doesn't some money taxed by the federal entity trickle down to the states somehow ? edit: What's the state/federal taxes ratio ?
    • nostromo 12y ago
      Yes, but only if you live in a poorer state. Every state I've lived in has been one of the rich states that gives more money to the federal government than it receives in services.
      • privong 12y ago
        But that does not mean that federal taxes do not enhance the state budget. That just means your federal taxes amount to more than the assistance your state gets. So your state budget is still enhanced by federal grants, over what it would have been.
    • john_b 12y ago
      To answer your first question: yes. However, the amount varies greatly by state and changes year to year. Many of the programs for which states receive federal money are temporary in nature. Others, like federal subsidies for state Medicaid programs, are more permanent in nature. The actual ratio is going to be very uneven throughout the country.
• gcv 12y ago
  > You pay taxes that are not much higher than in the US and actually get things in return This is amazing. (Let's disregard the two countries' differences in population sizes, demographics, debt, and military budgets.) A self-employed person in the US tends to lose between 40 and 50% of income to triple-taxes (depending on federal, state, and local levels), self-employment tax, and the need to buy expensive health insurance. What is the range of Norwegian tax rates under similar circumstances? Does Norway have a high consumption or sales tax rate?
  • refurb 12y ago
    Norway has a 25% VAT rate (lower for food and other items).
    • oldspiceman 12y ago
      But you do pay $25 USD for a cheeseburger.
      • deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
  • sitharus 12y ago
    Don't know about Norway, but here in New Zealand there is a personal income tax with progressive rates from 17.5% to 33%, with an additional ~1.5% ACC levy (essentially accident insurance). There's also 15% flat-rate GST (a value-added tax) applied to everything at point of sale. Councils also charge rates for local road, service and facility management based on land and improvement value, this works out to around $1000-$2000 per year for a family-size house. This is simply invoiced to the home owner. There are limited rebates for low-income people, especially families. This covers healthcare - both emergency and elective (though there are waiting lists for elective procedures), education at pre-univeristy levels (though schools do ask for donations because the funding is low after decades of cuts), road maintenance, public transport subsidies, unemployment and sickness benefits, armed forces and various other things. All this is deducted as I earn, I haven't filed a tex return since I was self employed 8 years ago. As a self-employed contractor I could claim business expenses against income and then paid the personal income tax on the remainder. I did not have an accountant for this, though I have accounting training. Incorporated companies pay a flat 28% tax, though there are some company types where the shareholders simply pay personal tax on dividends. There's no requirement for a company to be registered or incorporated though, simply pay personal tax on any profits. Also we don't have any capital gains tax, stamp duty, or pretty much any other sort of tax, other than import duties. Everywhere overseas looks so complex from this perspective.
• humanrebar 12y ago
  The awesomest part about Norwegian taxes is that they don't have to pay for everything because of all the Norwegian North Sea oil. I'm happy for the Norwegians, but this is not apples to apples. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norw...
  • alphydan 12y ago
    Yes, because the US doesn't have any oil ... oh, wait! Cumulative oil production: US: ~200bn barrels Norway: ~25bn barrels (in all fairness, the population of the US is about 60 times larger ... but then again, most of the fund is not spent today)
  • sintaxi 12y ago
    IMHO the comparison is fair. The US is the largest oil producing country in the world. It just happens to also have to import oil because consumption is so high.
• afterburner 12y ago
  Oh that last thing is nice; I feel like the Canadian government could easily do the same, as what they are essentially doing is checking my work against theirs, and sending me a notice afterwards that says "yup!" or "you were off by a bit". Although it still only takes me 30 minutes.
• tsotha 12y ago
  >You pay taxes that are not much higher than in the US and actually get things in return, like excellent health care, free tuition a social safety net, better infrastructure, and a much much higher standard of living across the board. Wellstone was right: We all do better when we all do better. You mean "We all do better when we use oil money spend $3800 more per capita than we collect in taxes".