How One of the World’s Wealthiest Individuals Avoided Taxes for Years
Many people are always complaining that the wealthy don’t pay their fair share in taxes. While that is an argument that will never end, it seems that one of the world’s richest men might be guilty. That’s because he was able to avoid paying taxes for more than 40 years. How is that possible? The wealthy taxpayer in question is the founder of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad, who is reportedly one of the top ten richest people in the world.
Although IKEA is clearly influenced by all things Swedish, the man who built the IKEA empire left his native country more than 40 years ago in the name of tax savings. IKEA is the number one furniture store in the world and in the fiscal year 2014-2015 the company reported 31.9 billion euros. However, taxes have always been a huge part of IKEA’s success. That’s exactly why Mr. Kamprad left the country he loves for Switzerland. He wanted a tax break.
While he did pay taxes in Switzerland during those 40 years, he legally avoided what would have been a much larger bill if he had stayed in Sweden, for both his company and his personal income. Now, after all these years he has returned to his native Sweden and in 2014 he paid what amounted to about $2 million in taxes to Sweden, while his net worth is reportedly worth an estimated $43.2 billion.
Don’t Get Scammed This Tax Season
Don’t Get Scammed This Tax Season Thousands of people are conned out of money every tax season by scammers. The problem with these scams is that they sound very convincing and if you don’t know what to look for, then you could easily be taken advantage of by one of these con artists. There’s a…
Identify Your Firm’s Future Leaders
Identify your firm’s future leaders; leaders are increasingly being asked to identify the emerging leaders in their organizations. To help in this process, we recently examined 360-degree performance appraisal data on more than 120 emerging leaders from 18 North American companies to see what leadership competencies ranked as important in selecting internal associates for…
Key Elements to Successful Teamwork
Key Elements to Successful Teamwork At our recent leadership retreat our team focused on two topics: Trust and accountability. After reading several books and having lively discussions for two days it became clear that a firm must have trust in order to hold people accountable. This is not a new or difficult concept; however, becoming…
The Perfect Leadership Trio
The Perfect Leadership Trio Chip Conley, author of ” The Rebel Rules: Daring to be Yourself in Business, says your management team should consist of a brain trust that includes a “passionate visionary,” a “get-your-hands-dirty operator,” and a “responsible, finance-minded executive.” But how do you use this in your business? 1. Passionate visionary. The passionate…