Recently, agricultural companies such as Salmar and Lerøy have sent out layoff notices for thousands of employees. The entire agricultural sector appears to be unhappy. The reason is the new salmon tax included in the government’s proposal for the national budget.
Economics professor Karen Helene Ulltveit-Moe of the University of Oslo served on the committee that investigated and recommended a land rent tax on aquaculture in 2019. She now believes the agricultural industry is playing an “intimidation game” to scare politicians and to be able to influence the very structure of the tax.
– So it’s not up to the individual sector to design its own tax, says Ulltveit-Moe during Dagsnytt 18 on NRK.
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I will help design the tax myself
Geir Ove Ystmark represents the seafood industry as managing director of Sjømat Norge. He says the salmon industry isn’t trying to scare politicians with layoff notices and that to claim that it is is unreasonable.
– These are obviously layoffs that occur because of the way this tax proposal is set up, says Ystmark.
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He went on to say that the salmon industry now calls for more time to be spent on organizing the levy in a way that is appropriate for the salmon industry.
– Then we noticed that there are other times, so we will get into a discussion of how to get a salmon tax that fits our industry. But what’s on the table now has serious weaknesses that we need to correct, says the CEO.
Ystmark believes that the production tax, which the aquaculture industry had to pay from 2021, was a solid contribution to the treasury and helped bring billions of kroner into the account of the Norwegian state and Norwegian municipalities.
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– I didn’t pay five cents
Ulltveit-Moe disagrees with the description of the production levy as a large additional levy and says a more comprehensive levy is needed – what the new salmon levy will be.
– This production tax is a tiny tax compared to the basic rental tax that is on the table. Why is it reasonable? Yes, that’s reasonable because the salmon industry uses so-called perpetual licenses, they’ve got a license to farm that lasts forever, as designed, says the economics professor.
– For most of all these concessions, the industry has not paid five cents to the state, he adds.
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Furthermore, Ulltveit-Moe questions any objections the agricultural industry has to the new salmon tax. This is because the industry itself was represented in the commission that investigated this with the land lease tax in 2019 and that the government announced that a new salmon tax would come as early as September.
– I think it is very strange that the problem is precisely that detail. Why hasn’t this been mentioned before, and above all why hasn’t the industry representative raised it in my committee? We discussed it a lot, says the economics professor.
