More proof that money goes where it’s well treated. That’s why IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad left Sweden in 1973. And now that the family wealth is protected by lawyers, guns and money it’s time to come back home at age 87. The Wall Street Journal reports:
IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad intends to move before the end of the year to Sweden, a country he left in the 1970s due to high tax rates.
Mr. Kamprad’s decision to move back to the small town of Älmhult in the Swedish province of Småland—where he started the company some 70 years ago—comes after the 87-year-old founder left the board of the parent company of the furniture brand earlier this month. One of Mr. Kamprad’s three sons, Mathias Kamprad, 44, was appointed chairman of Inter IKEA Group, which owns the IKEA brand and concept.
“To move back to Sweden brings me closer to my family and my old friends,” Mr. Kamprad said in a statement. After his wife died about a year and a half ago, he said “there is less to keep me in Switzerland.”
Mr. Kamprad left Sweden in 1973 due to Sweden’s high income and corporate taxes. Initially, he relocated to Denmark and then became a resident of Epilanges, Switzerland, in 1976.
Since then, the Nordic country’s tax laws have softened somewhat. A wealth tax has been abolished and income taxes have been lowered.
