Draft The wording, numbers and structure of this page are still being revised and will change.

“You can't value private companies, art and land, so a wealth tax can't work.”

Norway collects its wealth tax from 700,000 people, and banks and companies supply the numbers

In 2024 719,007 taxpayers paid Norwegian wealth tax, NOK 31.8 billion in all. Banks report balances to the tax authority, an unlisted company works out the value of its own shares and hands that to its owner, and the owner files the result. The rest of the country, 85% of adults, files the same return with no wealth tax on it.

By Egalitaristen · Updated November 9, 2026 · 4 min read

The objection says a wealth tax needs a price tag on every painting, farm and private company, and that nobody can set one. Norway collected NOK 31.8 billion from 719,007 taxpayers in 2024.^[1] Here is how it does the valuing.

#Nobody appraises the socks

Real wealth taxes never asked households to price their belongings. In Norway 701,482 residents paid wealth tax in 2024, 15.4% of adults, and the other 85% filed the same pre-filled return with no wealth tax on it.^[18] Sweden's old wealth tax counted movable property but left out personal furnishings, left out personal items worth under SEK 10,000 each, and counted cash only above SEK 25,000.^[19] A tax is written around what is worth valuing.

#How Norway does it

Banks and other institutions report balances and holdings to the tax authority. Statistics Norway's wealth tax tables break net wealth into bank deposits, mutual funds, shares and securities for each taxpayer, which is only possible because the data sit in the tax register.^[1]

An unlisted company values its own shares. Norway's tax appeals board put it plainly in December 2024: the company works out the wealth value of its shares when it files its own tax return, attaches the calculation, and the shareholder uses that figure in the personal return.^[2] The owner doesn't hire an appraiser for each share.

If an employee or pensioner doesn't submit a return, it counts as submitted with the pre-filled information. The tax authority estimated in April 2025 that 400,000 to 500,000 people don't even check theirs, and reminds everyone they remain responsible for it being right.^[14] A Norwegian news site wrote in 2020 that the vast majority of employees can just glance over all the numbers the tax authorities have already filled in.^[16]

Then there are the discounts the law writes in. For 2025 a primary home gets a 75% discount, shares 20%, operating assets 30%, and secondary homes none.^[3] A discount is a political choice about the rate. It has nothing to do with whether a value can be found.

#Where the system leaks, and why the fix is easy

The leak Norwegian authorities describe is foreign assets. The Auditor General found that many taxpayers don't report wealth and income held abroad, and the tax authority estimates the loss at about NOK 7 billion a year across all taxes, with too few controls.^[4]^[5] That is hidden foreign money in total, and the wealth tax is only part of it. Norway received over a million foreign reports for 2021.^[4] The answer was more control staff, which is the answer to every kind of tax evasion.^[5]

The Swiss experience shows what reporting buys. In cantons where financial wealth is self-reported, a one point cut in a canton's wealth tax rate raised reported taxable wealth by at least 43%. The researchers read much of that as concealment, in a setting with no third-party reporting of financial wealth.^[6] In other words, a lot of wealth was staying off the page, and bank reporting is what brings it onto it. Zurich's online tax return already takes a bank's electronic tax statement as a PDF, and the canton says the bank data go into the return with a few clicks.^[15] About 500,000 people used the canton's online return in 2026, roughly half of its taxpayers.^[17] The data still pass through the taxpayer, which is the gap automatic bank reporting closes.

#The hard cases are few, and they have been solved

Some wealth is hard to price: shares in private companies, and foreign holdings. Sweden's equality commission calls valuing unlisted companies one of two practical obstacles for a wealth tax. The same report records how Sweden dealt with it: its tax exempted unlisted shares, so the largest fortunes were left out.^[9] That was a choice, and it can be made the other way.

Germany has made it the other way. The Constitutional Court's 1995 order found land taxed at 1964 values and everything else at current values.^[10] Since 2009 German inheritance tax values land and companies close to market prices, and the DIW research institute proposes the same rules for a wealth tax.^[7] The valuation tool has been used on inheritances for years.

A law can also supply the number when none exists. California's Proposition 40 says an interest in a privately held business is worth its book value plus 7.5 times its average annual book profit over three years, multiplied by the owner's share. An owner who can't get the figures submits a certified appraisal.^[13]

#Few payers, so audit them one by one

How hard valuation is depends on how many households pay. A Socialist amendment in France in October 2026 names about 1,800 households for a minimum tax on fortunes above €100 million.^[8] The Greens' German motion expects a few hundred payers above €500 million.^[12] A tax authority can audit a few hundred or a few thousand households one at a time, with specialist teams, and the cost per household is small against the tax each one owes. Shares in private businesses enter Norway's base at only a tenth of their market value, a gap a tax with a high threshold would close.^[11]

#What a working system has

Institutions that hold assets report them to the tax authority. A company states the value of its own shares and the owner uses that figure. A specialist unit audits the largest fortunes. The law carries few discounts, and none for the largest holdings. Foreign assets are checked against the international reporting standard, which is worth doing for every tax whether or not there is a wealth tax.

#Who says so

The Norwegian story describes the tax in detail, the Swiss story covers the cantonal systems, and the German story covers the valuation order.

#Where to look next

The next page takes up the claim that the rich have no cash to pay. The Norwegian, Swiss, German and Swedish stories carry the underlying sources.