Hugin & Munin Journal

During its 2026 election campaign, Vänsterpartiet reopened a familiar Swedish argument about taxing mobile wealth. The party campaigned for a billionaire tax and had separately backed exit taxation for individuals . The dispute is usually framed as fairness against flight: either the very wealthy contribute more, or higher taxes drive them abroad. The more useful question begins after that argument. Once migration, changes in saving and investment, tax planning and other behavioural responses are included, how much of a mechanically expected tax increase actually reaches the state? And what does the economy give up to collect it? Editorial image generated by the author. The best Scandinavian evidence does not support the strongest version of either side's case. Wealth taxation does cause some wealthy people to move, but the resulting loss of investment and employment appears much smaller than the most dramatic warnings suggest. Migration is also only one part of the respons...

There is a comforting fiction at the centre of much modern tax politics: that public goods can be funded by someone else. Corporations should pay. Billionaires should pay. Employers should pay. Polluters should pay. Each slogan may contain a legitimate moral argument. Wealth is distributed unequally. Pollution imposes costs upon people who did not create it. Some profits come from monopoly, inheritance, control of scarce land or political privilege rather than fresh productive effort. The fiction begins when the legal recipient of the tax bill is treated as though it were standing outside the economy. Companies are owned by people, employ people, sell to people and invest on behalf of future production. Employer contributions form part of the cost of hiring. Taxes on property affect prices and returns. Carbon charges alter the cost of energy, transport and goods. None of this means that every tax is passed through completely or that redistribution is impossible. A corporate tax m...