GENEROUS TAX RESIDENCY LAWS
Take the case of John Fredriksen. Born in Norway, Fredriksen is one of the main figures in the global shipping industry, with interests spanning everything from tankers and dry-bulk vessels to offshore oil services and fish farming.
He left Norway in 1978 for the United Kingdom, and later renounced his Norwegian citizenship for a Cypriot one. But earlier this year, as the UK’s Labour government abolished the so-called non-dom status and explored the possibility of a wealth tax, Fredriksen was off again, this time for the United Arab Emirates.
“It is beginning to remind me more and more of Norway. Great Britain has gone to hell, like Norway … The whole Western world is on its way down,” Fredriksen told financial website E24. He even had the temerity to say, while in Norway: “I try to avoid Norway as much as I can.”
One issue is that many countries have generous allowances for how long people can spend there without becoming a tax resident.
Willy Michel, a Swiss pharmaceuticals billionaire, told the local newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung before the referendum that he and his wife would leave if the initiative were adopted. “We can still spend 180 days a year in Switzerland. We also have a residence in Mallorca, something in Piedmont, so even now we’re only here half the time,” he added.
Then there’s Lars Seier Christensen, the co-founder of Denmark’s Saxo Bank, a major shareholder in the football team FC Copenhagen and an investor in many of the Danish capital’s best restaurants, including Alchemist. He lives in Switzerland but can spend up to half of the year in his homeland – “that is more than enough”, he once told me jovially.
