An imperfect wealth tax and employment in closely held firms

Abstract

Fuelled by increasing inequality and rising fiscal deficits, the interest in wealth taxation has grown over recent years, both in the public debate and in academia. A key concern is that the wealth tax may reduce the amount of capital available to closely held firms and drag down their employment. Yet knowledge about the behavioural effects of a wealth tax is limited. A wealth tax is almost by construction imperfect, as the value of some assets is unobserved. In particular, intangible assets held by non-traded firms are in practice tax-exempt, giving firm owners an incentive to allocate wealth into their businesses, for example, in the form of (untaxed) human capital investments. We utilize rich Norwegian register data and a series of tax reforms implemented between 2007 and 2017 to study how a net wealth tax imposed on owners of small and medium-sized businesses affects their firms' employment. Identification of causal effects is based on a saturated control function approach, fully isolating the influence of tax reforms. Our results indicate a positive causal relationship between the level of a household's wealth tax and subsequent employment growth in the taxpayers' closely held firms.