SalMar heir Gustav Witzøe confirmed Monday that while his peers flee to Switzerland, he will gladly continue paying the government a daily fortune to remain as close to his meticulously trapped fish as possible.
Dismissing the ongoing exodus of wealthy Norwegians to tax havens, salmon farming heir Gustav Witzøe announced he will happily absorb a wealth tax increase costing him roughly $100,000 per day in order to maintain absolute, uninterrupted proximity to his millions of captive fish. Witzøe, whose family founded the massive aquaculture firm SalMar, told reporters that the crippling financial penalty is a minor inconvenience compared to the joy of physically standing near the nation's most densely populated aquatic holding pens.
To justify the staggering daily tax burden, Witzøe is betting his fortune on constructing what he calls the “World's Best Fish Farm,” an offshore facility equipped with state-of-the-art technology designed to ensure the salmon are subjected to unprecedented levels of maritime surveillance. The new deep-ocean rigs will utilize artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, and heavy-duty netting to give Witzøe the peace of mind that his fish are not going anywhere, regardless of how much the government charges him to look at them.
We ran the numbers on relocating to Lucerne to avoid the wealth tax, but you simply cannot subject three million sea creatures to this level of unblinking, high-definition surveillance in a landlocked canton.
While dozens of Norwegian billionaires have recently relocated to the Swiss Alps to protect their assets, Witzøe reportedly expressed pity for his exiled peers, noting that they are now forced to stare at majestic, snow-capped mountains instead of a churning vortex of captive protein. Industry analysts confirmed that Switzerland's distinct lack of freezing, storm-battered fjords makes it an entirely unsuitable environment for a man whose primary passion is watching industrial machinery extract thousands of tons of biomass from the sea.
At press time, Witzøe was seen cheerfully signing a $100,000 check to the Norwegian tax authority before donning a bright yellow raincoat and boarding a high-speed vessel to go stare intensely at a tablet displaying live underwater camera feeds of his property.