"The monograph provides thorough insight into the practises of the Swedish Tax Agency and the considerations of taxpayers when deciding whether or not to be tax compliant. Due to the topical nature of the matter at hand it should be of interest to a broader audience." (Yvette Lind, British Tax Review, Issue 2, 2021)
Preface
1 Exchanges create relations
Defining taxation
Reciprocity
Why Sweden?
Understanding the relation between society and tax
Fieldwork: Ethnography of Swedes' views on taxation
Research on why we pay tax
Anthropology of economic exchanges and reciprocity
Reciprocity proliferating
To see tax as a gift - or?
Conclusion
Literature
2 Taxpayers’ relation to their state
Taxes in terms of reciprocity cannot be measured
The Agency’s view on why taxpayers comply
Fairness in tax collection
Who is the taxpayer?
A contemporary view of taxpayers at the Agency
Getting value for ‘tax’ money
Unfairly treated by society
Balancing a fair deal with the state
Conclusion
Literature
3. Taxpayer to taxpayer relation
The Agency's view
Barter
Taxpayer views on barter
Business and private life
An example: Horse trotting
Business and private life continued
Informalizing the formal
Formalizing the informal: Share economy
Conclusion
Literature
4. Tensions between paying and receiving
Being Magister
Progressive marginal tax
Pillars of society
Balance artists
Contributive and distributive balancing
Not paying for those who do not pay
A fair society
Conclusion
Literature
5. Making tax compliant
Taxation is a total social phenomenon
Balance outstanding
Fair share – all need to contribute
Literature
Lotta Björklund Larsen is Research Fellow at Linköping University, Sweden. She is an economic anthropologist that finds taxation a fascinating practice as it goes right to the heart of the relations between individuals’ values, governmental regulations and institutional impact. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Irvine and The City University of New York, USA. Prior to academic work, Björklund Larsen worked in the financial software industry.
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.