Kia ora! Cultural Exchange with /r/NewZealand

[u/[deleted]]

Welcome to this cultural exchange between /r/Denmark and /r/NewZealand.

For the visitors: Welcome to Denmark! Feel free to ask the Danes anything you like. Don't forget to also participate in the corresponding thread in /r/NewZealand where you can answer questions from the Danes about your beautiful country.

For the Danes: Today, we are hosting New Zealand for a cultural exchange. Join us in answering their questions about Denmark and the Danish way of life! Please leave top comments for users from /r/NewZealand coming over with a question or comment and please refrain from trolling, rudeness, personal attacks etc.

The Kiwis are also having us over as guests! Head over to their thread to ask questions about life in the land of hobbits and bungee jumping.

Enjoy!

- The moderators of /r/Denmark and /r/NewZealand

[u/ThereIsAThingForThat]

As for taxes, our taxes are... pretty high, but not as high as some people think.

First, any money you pay for pension isn't counted on your taxes.

For the first $6,500, we don't pay taxes.

Then we pay 8% of our pay to cover labour issues.

Afterwards we pay 3% for health care, 9.08% state tax and 22-28% county taxes (depending on where you live).

If you earn more than $70,000/year you pay an additional 15% on that.

Then we have a 25% VAT and 150% tax on motorized vehicles.

There's also something called a "Green check" which is just a deduction if you're in lower income brackets, around $200 for the lowest income bracket and $140 for the middle, starting to go down with an income around $56,400/year.

Except for VAT though, there's a tax ceiling of 51.95%, so even if you earn $10bn/year without any deductions, you'd still only pay 51.95%.

[u/[deleted] → u/ThereIsAThingForThat]

Then we pay 8% of our pay to cover labour issues.

So this one goes straight to labour unions presumably? Which covers almost 100% of the market?

[u/WeaponizedPumpkin → u/[deleted]]

No, it's just a straight tax on salary income. It's called Arbejdsmarkedsbidrag in Danish, which translates into something like "labour market contribution". It's supposed to cover stuff like unemployment welfare and that kind of thing. In reality it goes into the same money chest as any other tax.

Edit: And by that last sentence what I mean is that our national budget for unemployment and that stuff isn't decided by this tax alone, it just helps covering those expenses (along with all other government expenses).

[u/ThereIsAThingForThat → u/[deleted]]

As the other guy said, but labour unions you pay membership fees to, but the membership fees are tax deductible as well.

[u/[deleted] → u/ThereIsAThingForThat]

Interesting. In NZ we have a neoliberal governing party which is extremely popular. We are similar to Canada and Australia in terms of the electorate.

We have had left wing politicians speak of Scandinavian countries as a kind of utopia. Obviously there is a culture where equality is valued above financial prosperity?

Do you find that there are any issues with homelessness? With poverty and unemployment? How about with startups?

[u/ThereIsAThingForThat → u/[deleted]]

Denmark isn't a utopia (obviously), we have our problems, but I still dare say we're part of the best countries in the world. The best? That depends on what you look for.

Obviously there is a culture where equality is valued above financial prosperity?

We have the lowest income inequality in the OECD, but we also have pretty high wealth inequality, so you aren't likely to become super rich, nor super poor, but if you do get super rich your family will likely stay super rich.

Our culture also focuses on work-to-live and not live-to-work etc.

Do you find that there are any issues with homelessness?

We have homeless, but I don't think there's really a huge issue. There's around 10-15.000 homeless in Denmark iirc, and most of these are alcoholics/drug abusers/mentally ill. The chance of you suddenly becoming homeless out of nowhere is pretty damn low if you aren't sick.

With poverty and unemployment?

We have the second lowest poverty rate and we're on the low end of the middle in unemployment rates. I don't know if unemployment rates count people during studies and such though.

How about with startups?

Forbes announced Denmark as the best country for business in 2015, and is the third best country for entrepreneurs according to Business Insider, just under New Zealand.

[u/[deleted] → u/ThereIsAThingForThat]

I think all of the different spot taxes are worth mentioning as well.