Suchergebnisse

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book takes a taxpayer's perspective to the relations taxation creates between people and their state. Larsen proposes that in order to understand tax compliance and cheating, we have to look beyond law, psychological experiments and surveys to include tax collectors and taxpayers' practices. The text explores the view of taxes seen as citizen's explicit economic relation to the state and implicit economic relation to all other compatriots. Larsen suggests how to build and increase tax compliance if we take the idea of taxation creating reciprocal relations seriously. The empirical cases are based on ethnography from two opposing tax practices in Sweden. Firstly, from a study of analysts, auditors, legal experts and managers at the Swedish Tax Agency and how they, quite successfully, strive for legitimacy in their tax collecting activities in society. Secondly, from fieldwork among a group of middle-aged Swedes and how they justify their tax-cheating when purchasing work off the books. Sweden is a modern society seen as particularly rational and the least prone to worry about survival issues; they trust their government and fellow citizens. Sweden is therefore an important country to look at as an example of tax compliance and whether other countries showing a continuous inclination towards these values will follow their lead.

This report outlines the Swedish cooperative compliance project Fördjupad samverkan - FS (enhanced collaboration) introduced in 2011 and the modified initiative relaunched as Fördjupad dialog – FD (enhanced dialogue) in 2014. It describes how the Swedish Tax Agency proposed an initiative that carried with it international success stories from similar projects, but in the Swedish version and context met with strong resistance and is now put on hold awaiting proposed changes in the law. This chronological trajectory teases out issues that impact tax compliance among large corporations and perhaps also among ordinary taxpayers in Swedish society. Based on these issues, I suggest eight aspects that have to be paid attention to when implementing cooperative compliance initiatives. These aspects seldom stand alone but are drawn upon in various combinations making criticism possible. ; FairTax

This report outlines the Swedish cooperative compliance project Fördjupad samverkan - FS (enhanced collaboration) introduced in 2011 and the modified initiative relaunched as Fördjupad dialog – FD (enhanced dialogue) in 2014. It describes how the Swedish Tax Agency proposed an initiative that carried with it international success stories from similar projects, but in the Swedish version and context met with strong resistance and is now put on hold awaiting proposed changes in the law. This chronological trajectory teases out issues that impact tax compliance among large corporations and perhaps also among ordinary taxpayers in Swedish society. Based on these issues, I suggest eight aspects that have to be paid attention to when implementing cooperative compliance initiatives. These aspects seldom stand alone but are drawn upon in various combinations making criticism possible. ; FairTax

The foundation of a functioning welfare state is a tax system that is widely accepted and considered to be fair and legitimate. How and by what means a tax collecting agency interprets the laws are thus seen to have an impact on taxpayers' willingness to pay. This article addresses the various practices, knowledge and forms of data that the Swedish Tax Agency applies in a risk assessment project, against a background of the Agency's on-going endeavour for legitimacy. This article shows how its methods not only entail taking account of massive amounts of Tax Agency regulations, research, and statistical results to follow, but also reveals how stories, hunches and examples from media and everyday life coalesce to affect those methods. So, too, with the ethnographer's role: how is she to deal with knowledge production within a governmental organization whose employees read, and also learn from, what she writes. ; Swedish Tax Dynamics. Values and Practices at The Swedish Tax Agency and The Economization of Society

Svart arbete, informal purchases of work, is a widely debated societal phenomenon in Sweden. It is often seen as detrimental to contemporary welfare society, eroding taxpaying morals, fair competition and solidarity with fellow citizens. Acknowledged as wrong, it is in many instances also an acceptable and commonplace exchange practice. This study addresses this incongruity and aims to show how these inconspicuous exchanges of work are distinguished in terms of legality and licitness. Methodologically, the study is based on ethnographic interviews with a group of people in all walks of life, who have their roots in a small town in southern Sweden. In the midst of life and work, they address situations where living in accordance with moral standards becomes difficult. The study aims to illuminate multifaceted reasonings about the illegal but licit purchases made and how people make sense and meaning of them in retrospect and in the larger context of societal economy. The ways in which these purchases of svart arbete are justified illustrate inherent tensions in contemporary welfare society. Purchases of svart arbete are often justified as rational economic decisions in terms of being cheap and simple. The study shows that purchasing work informally is not only a rational economic decision, but can also be the result of resolving necessities in daily life due to societal bottlenecks and/or probing tax legislation. As an economic phenomenon, these purchases are therefore not seen as set apart from the formal structures of the Swedish economy, but as co-existing with them. Justifying the illegal but licit svart arbete, purchasers are seen to emphasise a reciprocal relationship with the provider of the work and also with the state. In this way, a sense of balance and justice is achieved.

Taxation is central to the financing of most states, and monitoring that taxpayers comply with laws and regulations is a correspondingly important government activity. Governments have many ways to design tax systems, and no two national tax systems are the same. Hence, compliance strategies differ and so do outcomes. Complying with tax laws, beyond the fiscal aim of contributing revenue to a state, is multifaceted in a globalized world. Tax administrations struggle to control large multinational enterprises' (MNEs) tax planning, avoidance and general evasion, whereas MNEs grapple with the problem of having to comply with widely divergent national tax systems. As a response, tax administrations, through membership organisations such as the OECD, invent forms of collaboration between tax administrations and MNEs—all with the goal of increasing tax compliance. One way they do this is through the co-operative compliance model. Here, we compare two compliance projects, based on this model, in Norway and Sweden to shed more light on what tax compliance is in practice. We elaborate on Valerie Braithwaite's seminal concept of tax compliance as a 'dance' between tax administrations and taxpayers. In so doing we underline the significance of paying attention to conceptions of time and space as critical elements of creating compliance in practice between tax administrations and MNEs.