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Comment by mavhc | Hacker News Reader

Most countries have more of a scaled income tax, but Sweden has 57% if you earn 1.5x the average. Why is that?

To keep the class system intact. The ultra-wealthy don't pay much more tax (and don't pay property or inheritance tax, and capital gains tax is also lower than income tax (wtf?)). It's a far less progressive country than the marketing would have you believe.

And unfortunately all the political parties are just focussed on giving more money to the boomers or liberalising the housing market, so it won't change any time soon.

I think inheritance tax differs across Scandinavia, just a small point really not detracting from your message. In Denmark there's definitely one, Sweden it's none or much lower, not sure.

You can even chose to pay 0.375% on your assets p/a, instead of the capital gains tax. Pretty good. But you’re exaggerating the income tax situation. ~60% is the marginal tax rate, you only pay that for a part of your income over a certain level.

Can you choose year by year? I’d think most years 37.5bps on assets would be way cheaper than capital gains, but in a down year, you might choose to pay capital gains. (Or you could “bunch” realized gains into every other or every third year and take the wealth tax option only that year.)

It’s a special kind of account, you can sell everything and withdraw the proceeds, then buy new assets outside that account. So you can choose, but not retroactively (unfortunately!)

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