Suecia: Giving citizens the right means to contribute to the society – reflections and experiences from Sweden / Swedish Tax Agency – Eric Thorén
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Suecia: Giving citizens the right means to contribute to the society – reflections and experiences from Sweden / Swedish Tax Agency – Eric Thorén
- 1. Giving citizens the right means to contribute to the society – reflections and experiences from Sweden Swedish Tax Agency – Eric Thorén
- 2. Topics • The Swedish context • Drivers for citizen participation • What we have done and where we are • Thoughts for the future
- 4. The Swedish context • Very high 3rd party reporting • Relatively easy to ”do the right thing” • A Tax agency that is viewed as an authority that is: – helping in doing the right thing – defending those who are doing the right thing – addressing those who aren’t doing the right thing Tax Gap 8-9 % Audit results 1-2 % Right from the beginning ~90 %
- 5. Drives for citizen participation
- 6. Drivers for citizen participation • Confidence in the authority (we are good guys) – Just and fair decisions from the authority – Emphatic treatment that supports the citizen – Simplicity in doing the right thing (regulations and services) – Secure and comfortable solutions • Social norms in our society – Swedes like the infrastructure of the society
- 7. What we have done and where we are • Educational efforts – High schools – Campaign ”It’s OK if people work without paying tax” Disagree Agree 2002 42% 25% 2004 55% 18% • Transforming the Swedish Tax Agency
- 8. Thoughts for the future
- 9. Thoughts for the future • Simplicity (regulations and services) • Comprehensibility – all the way • Availability - not only a “tech thing” • On the citizen’s term • Enhanced cooperation with industry/unions/civic groups
- 10. Muchas gracias!
Notas del editor
- Thank you very much for this opportunity to share experiences and reflections we have made in Sweden. Of course, context can be very different between countries and I am not sure that our findings are directly applicable should the context in your country be very different from the one in Sweden. Therefore I would like to start with a quick overview of the Swedish context, before I turn to our key findings. I will then go through the key drivers for citizens to participate and contribute to the well being of our society. As a third part, I will give you a summary of what we have done regarding taxpayer education, and the results of those efforts. Finally, emphazising on where we are I will conclude my presentation with a very short summary of our thoughts on our continuos development. By that I mean that we still have a lot to do in Sweden.
- The situation in Sweden is best illustrated by the picture! Our analyses of the tax gap are as follows: Almost 90% of total taxes are provided as a result of citizens and corporations doing the right thing directly. Mainly due to: a very high percentage of third party reporting (we have approx 70 millions 3rd party reports for a population of 9 million citizens and 500-600.000 corporations) relatively straight forward regulations and easy to use services to which citizens and corporations confirms their declarations and/or add information before declaring What is very interesting is the fact that, even with fairly good and developed processes, only about 1-2 percent is collected thru audits That leaves less than 10 percent of calculated but not collected taxes, the tax gap. We also strongly believe that due to our way of working and our own attitudes towards citizens and corporations the Swedish Tax Agency is viewed as an authority that is FOR the citizens and that we are there to help citizens fulfilling their obligations in the right way. That really does affect complience. When asking the citizens in surveys, we learn that they look at us and really feel that we defend those who want to do the right thing (the many) and that we address those who don’t (the few). They are of course equal keys to complience.
- So actually - at least in Sweden and in our context – key drivers for creating citizen participation can be divided in two areas: Confidence in the authority And of course, social norms Confidence is built and kept by never stop trying to enhance our strenghts and to always address our flaws: We have to be sure to make just and fair decisions – it doesn’t work to make different decisions different times on the same matter. We have to make sure that, regardless of who the official is, the decision is the same. And also that when in doubt of how to interpret regulations, we always have to decide in the citizens favour. We understand more and more the importance of being emphatic in communicating with citizens and corporations. A citizen that feels like ”a case” instead of a ”real person behind the case” soon becomes less willing to contribute and doing the right thing. We have done research and we have found that out as a very significant difference. We have to make it easy to participate, in the sense that we strive to simplify regulations so they are easy to understand and make our services at the benefit of the user – that means really listen to citizens and corporations how services should be built to serve them the best way. We also have to make sure that our services are viewed as secure enough (today’s IT is not always regarded as safe and with respect to the integrity of citizens) and comfortable in the sense that the citizen isn’t left with questions not answered after using our services. Even in developing digital services it is important to make them ”emphatic”. It also really helps to have the social norms that we have in Sweden! In Sweden, it is the social norm to contribute for the best of the society. That means that people have a fairly solid trust in authorities in general and believe in ”being a good citizen” for the benefit of everybody. Of course not all authorities are seen as well functioning organisations but as a norm, they are well seen. Undeclared labour is not very well seen by the Swedes, and of course, that obliges…
- Okay then! Yes, we have some educational experiences towards young people in Sweden. Or efforts have been mainly two different programs: From the mid 90’s we had a program where we sent out self-educational kits to all schools in Sweden. Teachers of children at the age of 13 to 15, got a kit from us with a game setup. The idea was to make it easy for children to learn by playing. The setup was ”what would be the effects of money not reaching the society” – what would then happen to pensions, social wellfare and healthcare? Thru discussions between students, we could affect their mindset toward taxes. We made sure that our kit did not ”tell them what was right” but to have them arguing for what was right! However we weren’t successful in the long run, we weren’t able to ethousiasm the teachers enough – it was a period where the educational systems changed alot in Sweden and theachers in general ”turned back to what they had allways done” so we dropped the initiative after around years. Between 2002 and 2004 we also did a big countrywide campaign under the name ”Restaurants Black sheep and White Horse, a campaign that adressed a common area of undeclared wages. The campaign adressed young people who were about to enter the working society and to have them make sure that their employeur declared their wages. The setup was again riskbased, in the sense that it focused on the loss for people that worked undeclared and it’s consequenses, pensions for example. It also was a setup that explained how the restaurant that wanted to do the right thing (White Horse) was under unfair competition by the one that wouldn’t (Black sheep). The campaign was successful. It changed attitudes among people. After the two years we measured that the percentage of the population that felt that ”undeclared wages is acceptable” had dropped from around 25% to around 18%. However, the campaign was debated internally within the Tax Agency (not everyone approved of the setup) and we terminated it after two years. With great respect to this conference’s main idea, I would however like to say that what has really been the ”game changer” in Sweden – has been the transformation of the Tax Agency itself – not the different ”external actions”. Of course, that is within the context where we are in Sweden! The transition from the authority that acted as the ”police” and from the assumption that the citizen did all that she could to evade taxes – to the service organisation that starts from the assumption that they want to do the right thing. That has been a journey for the last 13-15 years and is ongoing - it is still our biggest challenge – to really have every single employee meeting citizens and corporations with that view!
- So, finally, what are our thoughts or focus for the nearest future – in giving the adequate means for contribution? We still have a lot to do regarding simplifying regulations and services! We still have a long way to go to make sure that all our communication is comprehensive – we still struggle with our way of communicating decisions to citizens – we simply can’t seem to express ourselves in plain Swedish! We are still debating on the need of availability. What if an e-service is open 24/7, but the support isn’t? We know that e-services still aren’t that intuitive but we aren’t there to help the citizens when they use them outside office hours. What is the cost of not responding to a question? Does a customer wait for us to open and/or how does that affect her willing to contribute? And finally of course – in believing that the easy way of contributing as a citizen is the completely prefilled declaration – enhanced cooperation with the industry to get even more third party data is essential. But we also develops our skills and processes to work more closely with different industry unions to have them securing their clients declarations (businesses around Sweden). If they work with us and sign a deal with us stating that they certifie te correctness of their client declarations, their client businesses have a kind of a ”fast lane” at the Swedish Tax Agency. I think that is what some countries call horisontal monitoring. Thank you!