Shaping taxpayers : values in action at the Swedish tax agency / Lotta Bjorklund Larsen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Larsen, Lotta Björklund, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sweden. Riksskatteverket.

Sweden.

Tax collection--Social aspects--Sweden.

Tax collection.

Taxation--Social aspects--Sweden.

Taxation.

Taxation--Social aspects.

Social aspects.

Physical Description:

xiii, 203 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Berghahn Books, 2017.

Summary:

How do you make taxpayers comply? This ethnography offers a vivid, yet nuanced account of knowledge making at one of Sweden's most esteemed bureaucracies - the Swedish Tax Agency. In its aim to collect taxes and minimize tax faults, the Agency mediates the application of tax law to ensure compliance and maintain legitimacy in society. This volume follows one risk assessment project's passage through the Agency from its inception, through the research phase, in discussions with management to its final abandonment. With its fiscal anthropological approach, Shaping Taxpayers reveals how diverse knowledge claims - legal economic, cultural - compete to shape taxpayer behaviour. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 From Control to Compassion: A History of the Swedish Tax Agency 43

A Very Brief History of Swedish Taxation 46

Buildings as a Force of Form 51

Who Rules (at) the Swedish Tax Agency? 56

Working with Tax Compliance at the Agency 57

Agency Strategies Creating Tax Compliance 66

The Analysis Unit 76

The Cost Deduction Project 79

The Workings of the Agency 83

Chapter 2 Talking with People: What Can We Learn from an Attitudinal Survey? 88

The Social Life of Surveys 89

Surveys Are What We Usually Do 92

Making and Framing the Survey Structure 94

Caveats in Theory?, but Not in Practice 100

Disciplining the Survey 104

Executing the Survey 110

And the Results Are... 113

Chapter 3 X Per Cent: The Birth of a Number at the Random Audit Control Department 119

Random Audit Controls: Core Practices at the Agency 121

The Random Method: Planning, Organizing and Sampling 123

At the Random Audit Control Department 126

An Audit 127

Reasonable Decisions 130

A Secured Result? 135

Chapter 4 To Publish or Not? Communicating and Legitimizing Concerns Regarding the Projects's Result 141

The Problem of the Who ... 146

...and the Why 149

Interpreting and Applying the Law 151

The Role of Analysis 153

Measures: What Can the Agency do? 155

To Control or to Communicate - What? 161

Conclusion: Values in Action 168

Knowledge Used in this Risk Assessment Project 170

How to Impact Tax Compliance? 173

Fair Interpretation, Fair Taxation? 176

Values and Valuations 178.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Larsen, Lotta Björklund, author. Shaping taxpayers.

ISBN:

9781785334108

1785334107

OCLC:

959258943