---
title: "Inheritance Tax and Building Wealth — Sami Miettinen on Kuuntelija"
titleOriginal: "Perintövero ja vaurastuminen – Sami Miettinen"
description: "Sami Miettinen as a guest on Roni Arvonen's Kuuntelija on Finland's most hated tax: why the damage is compounding cut off too early rather than the €1.3bn it raises, what nobody inherits is a sack of cash, what Sweden's 2005 abolition did to private capital there, and why Finnish companies end up owned by the state, the pension system and foreigners."
format: "podcast"
show: "Kuuntelija"
episode: "Kuuntelija"
hosts: ["Roni Arvonen"]
date: 2025-01-12
duration: "1:42:19"
language: "fi"
original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyxAR5Fncbk
relatedEpisode: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/709-kun-twiitista-tehdaan-rikos-roni-arvosen-tarina/
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/kuuntelija-inheritance-tax-and-wealth/
---

# Inheritance Tax and Building Wealth — Sami Miettinen on Kuuntelija

Sami Miettinen joined **Kuuntelija** host Roni Arvonen for an hour and three quarters on
inheritance tax — the first of his two long appearances on the show, and the one people
kept clipping afterwards.

The central argument is not about the revenue. Inheritance and gift tax raises roughly
€1.3bn, up from €1.17bn in 2023 as the death rate rises, taken out of an inherited pot
of something like €7bn spread across some 55,000 estates a year. Sami's case is that the
number is beside the point: what the tax actually does is cut compounding off at the
moment it has the most time left to run. Wealth that is allowed to keep growing across a
generational handover follows an exponential curve, and a country that interrupts that
curve every thirty years never accumulates the private capital that funds anything.
Sweden abolished the tax — decided in 2004, in force from 2005 — and Sami reads the
Swedish unicorns and the Spotifys as downstream of that. Sweden is an owner economy;
Finnish companies are owned instead by state institutions, Solidium, the pension system
and foreign capital, because there is almost no domestic private capital left to own
them.

The second argument is about what an inheritance actually is. Nobody inherits a sack
labelled "one million". They inherit a flat in a place with no market, held in an
undivided estate, with a tax bill due before anything can be sold — and if it will not
sell, the bill is due anyway. The same problem shows up in crowdfunded shareholdings:
illiquid paper with a high assessed value, landing on heirs who cannot turn it into cash.
He extends the logic to wealth taxes generally — if not owning is the virtue, the tailored
suit should be rented too.

The conversation ranges wider than the title: YLE, who to vote for and why he stays
unaligned, the Martin Paasi episode and how a narrative survives its own facts, the euro
and the payments imbalance that has Germany financing over a thousand billion of other
countries' purchases, why Sweden was wise to join the EU without the euro, what Poland
gets right, and whether Finland needs its own DOGE.

## Chapters

- **0:00** — Introduction, by way of asking Grok who Sami Miettinen is
- **2:51** — YLE
- **5:15** — Owning things is dangerous
- **6:50** — Finland's most hated tax
- **11:40** — Is inheritance tax an efficient tax?
- **12:20** — Wool-jumper economics
- **16:25** — The Swedish model and what abolition did there
- **21:50** — Do you have to accept an inheritance?
- **31:40** — Who should you vote for?
- **48:10** — Is inheritance tax free money?
- **57:45** — The euro
- **1:09:21** — What can we learn from Poland?
- **1:18:55** — Do income differences widen if the tax goes?
- **1:20:12** — How to reduce an inheritance tax bill
- **1:25:33** — Does Finland need its own DOGE?

**The recording lives on Kuuntelija's own channel and they own it.** This page is a record
of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. Timestamps follow the
chapter marks Kuuntelija published with the episode.

Sami returned to Kuuntelija later for
[a two-and-a-half-hour conversation on AI](/media/kuuntelija-ai-changes-everything/),
which opens by referring back to this one. Roni Arvonen has also appeared on the
Neuvottelija channel, in
[When a tweet is made a crime](https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/709-kun-twiitista-tehdaan-rikos-roni-arvosen-tarina/).

Original recording (Kuuntelija): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyxAR5Fncbk

From the same session: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/709-kun-twiitista-tehdaan-rikos-roni-arvosen-tarina/

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, guest on Kuuntelija Kuuntelija — Inheritance Tax and Building Wealth — Sami Miettinen on Kuuntelija, 2025-01-12, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyxAR5Fncbk. Record: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/kuuntelija-inheritance-tax-and-wealth/.