Bjørn Dæhlie and others move to Bø in Vesterålen for low wealth tax – Sture Pedersen applauds – NRK

The future does not look very bright for many peripheral municipalities. Nor on Bø in Vesterålen.

According to Statistics Norway, the municipality will lose more than 200 inhabitants by 2050.

The mayor of Bø, Sture Pedersen (H), wants to do something about it and therefore he and a near unanimous municipal council have decided to reduce the municipal wealth tax.

The objective is to attract rich people who want to invest in the municipality and thus generate optimism and employment.

– The state left us a long time ago, so I can only spend energy on private businesses, says Pedersen, who has been mayor of Bø since 2007.

And the investment has already paid off. NRK wrote on Tuesday that ski king Bjørn Dæhlie is taking a fortune of around 400 million crowns with him and moving to the municipality. Einar Sissener, Kristian Adolfsen and Benn Eidissen do the same.

In total, they had a fortune of almost NOK 1.5 billion in 2018.

According to Pedersen, they can follow more.

– I assume that ten or so pieces with at least 200 million crowns of wealth will be moved to Bø before the end of the year.

And several of them are supposed to be very eager to invest in the municipality.

– The last day I sat in meetings with some of those guys. Especially in tourism, there are very specific plans, which I hope we can present before Christmas. So we are talking about investments of 200-300 million. If someone had told me this just a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it.

And continues:

– For the first time, I have experienced that chain stores and other types of companies have contacted me and told me that they are considering establishing themselves in Bø. I have been mayor for four terms and have never experienced anything like it.

But not everyone is equally excited about the tax cuts in Nordland Township. In a commentary on Nordlys, political editor Skjalg Fjellheim describes the whole thing as a “sad story.”

For NRK elaborates:

– I think this is a shocking picture of northern Norway. One should concentrate on creating one’s own values ​​and not become dependent on handouts from the wealthiest in this country.

Lowering the estate tax is not a viable way to generate growth and development in the region, says Fjellheim, who doesn’t think the stunt will create many jobs.

Nor does he believe that more municipalities in northern Norway will follow suit.

– I see this as a public relations stunt by a conservative mayor who has received a lot of attention and a few minutes in the national media. It is hard for me to imagine that the rest of the municipality in Northern Norway will travel such an unrealistic path towards value creation and growth in the region.

– Northern Norway should not be a fiscal reserve for an economic elite that imports from other parts of the country, concludes Fjellheim.

Sture Pedersen responds in cash to the criticism:

– Skjalg Fjellheim offers me no alternative. What would you like? That should remain true that the councilman should sit down and cut because we lose between 20 and 30 people every year? This is almost the case in all municipalities in northern Norway.

Y:

– I know it is for the northern Norwegian line, but how will it help me? That there will be a train to Tromsø, what jobs will come to Bø from it?

Tax cuts in Bø were also a topic at Dagsnytt 18 today. One of the participants was billionaire Benn Eidissen. During the morning, he announces a transfer to the municipality of Vesterål.

– I’m not doing this to save money. I do this to use the money that today goes to the wealth tax to create jobs and businesses in Bø.

On Dagsnytt 18, Eidissen was challenged by County Mayor Tore O. Sandvik (Labor Party) in Trøndelag, who yesterday wrote a very short debate post in Trønderdebatt, where he specifically criticizes Bjørn Dæhlie.

– I can understand the despair of the district municipalities due to the famine of the conservatives in the municipalities, the lack of district politics and the centralization of services. But I don’t think the answer is to start with importing millionaires who have become so wealthy in Norway that they feel they cannot afford to live in a normal welfare Norwegian municipality, Sandvik explained in Dagsnytt 18.

Eidissen was obviously provoked.

– Unlike Sandvik, who has not created a single job, at least with their own money, I and the others who moved to Bø have done it by the hundreds. There is a difference between those who create value and those who share value.

NRK has previously written that if all Norwegian municipalities act like Bø, tax revenue will be reduced by nine billion.

It is also a key argument for critics of the tax cuts.

Benn Eidissen believes that there are alternatives.

– For example, to tax those companies that have a profit, and that have money to pay the tax, a little more than today. Today, those who do not have money and own a building or land receive the wealth tax on the money they do not have.