Skatteverkets kontrollverksamhet idag och i framtiden - samt dess effekter på skattebeteendet hos småföretagare

Sammanfattning: The Swedish Tax Agency is a government authority whose mission is to collect taxes and fees for financing the public sector and welfare in Sweden. Under the last decade the tax gap in Sweden has been constant and small businesses with a max turnover of 25 millions Swedish crowns are the biggest group in the tax gap. In the government inquiry about abolishment of statutory audit for small businesses (2008) there has been laid some proposals that the Swedish Tax Agency should get new control tools and increased rights to control small businesses tax accounts. In the science some controversies exists about tax authority’s ability to get taxpayers to pay taxes and fees to the society through using deterrence and compellence control methods versus more service? This ground has guided us to our presentation of a problem: “How the Swedish Tax Agency works with influencing small businesses behaviour through preventive actions and controls?” The purpose of this study is to research and understand how the Swedish Tax Agency works in their control activities to influence small businesses behaviours regarding taxes and fees. From this base we have also taken in consideration how an eventual abolishment of the audit statutory for small businesses, will affect control activities in the Swedish Tax Agency from a social behaviour approach. For getting answer to this question we have done a qualitative research with an abductive approach. The study is based on data materials from interviews within the Swedish Tax Agency and the four respondents who we interviewed worked in both strategic- and operative level. The Conclusions from this study shows that today’s control activities work majorly towards small firms who share social norms with the Swedish Tax Agency. This study shows also that abolishment of the audit statutory will inflect eventual consequences for the Swedish Tax Agency and lead in increasing of the present tax gap. This make the Swedish Tax Agency forced to change their work methods towards small businesses.