Lotta Björklund Larsen – författare

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.

Tax matters. It structures our societies, influences our choices, and reflects our values. Yet the meaning and impact of taxation are constantly changing in step with a world marked by climate transitions, demographic shifts, digitalisation, globalisation, and migration.This open access book addresses critical questions surrounding attitudes to tax and tax compliance through the lens of ‘fiscal belonging,’ demonstrating the value of qualitative approaches to tax research. It explores the lived experience of immigrants to the UK, and how feelings of belonging, exclusion, reciprocity, and obligation shape their encounters with the tax system. The book illuminates the many different facets of fiscal belonging, including the right to work and access to employment, as well as histories of colonialism and the economic history of different communities on a national scale. By foregrounding personal narratives and the complexity of social worlds, this book argues for more methodologically diverse and inclusive approaches to understanding why people do, or do not, pay tax. It will be of interest to scholars across disciplines, as well as tax professionals working in business, consultancy, and public administration.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This book takes a taxpayer's perspective on the relations taxation creates between people and their state. Björklund Larsen proposes that in order to understand tax compliance and cheating, we have to look beyond law, psychological experiments and surveys to also 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. Björklund Larsen directs our gaze onto the concept of reciprocity, which is often proposed as an explanation in tax compliance research, and explores its diverse meanings and implications ethnographically. 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. Secondly, from fieldwork among a group of middle-aged Swedes and how they justify their purchasing work off the books – essentially tax-cheating practices. Sweden is a modern welfare society with citizens holding rational and secular values, yet trusting their government and fellow citizens. Sweden also has a high tax burden that is collected by one of its most revered governmental agencies – the Swedish Tax Agency - making it an interesting case studying tax compliance.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This book takes a taxpayer's perspective on the relations taxation creates between people and their state. Björklund Larsen proposes that in order to understand tax compliance and cheating, we have to look beyond law, psychological experiments and surveys to also 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. Björklund Larsen directs our gaze onto the concept of reciprocity, which is often proposed as an explanation in tax compliance research, and explores its diverse meanings and implications ethnographically. 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. Secondly, from fieldwork among a group of middle-aged Swedes and how they justify their purchasing work off the books – essentially tax-cheating practices. Sweden is a modern welfare society with citizens holding rational and secular values, yet trusting their government and fellow citizens. Sweden also has a high tax burden that is collected by one of its most revered governmental agencies – the Swedish Tax Agency - making it an interesting case studying tax compliance.

Vinster i välfärden, slagsmål i taxiköerna och friskolor som går i konkurs - den så kallade marknaden tycks inte klara sig utan gränssättning och organisering. Utblickar av forskare i företagsekonomi, statsvetenskap och socialt arbete. Med en färsk opinionsundersökning. Riksbankens Jubileumsfonds årsbok 2014/2015.