Sweden is infamous for having some of the highest taxes in the world, and yet the country’s tax agency is still one of Sweden’s most trusted institutions.
The Swedish attitude towards tax contrasts sharply with many countries where taxes can be a deeply divisive issue. We investigate what this says about Swedish society and how the popularity of the welfare state might survive growing challenges in the future.
Americans have been taught to hate taxes. They have been sold the idea that the original concept of “no taxation without representation” didn’t include the latter two words. Decades of Republicans demonizing taxes have done it.
Pair that with the GOP systematically destroying public institutions by gutting public funding as much as possible while simultaneously eroding public trust. Our public education system? It used to be the best in the world until Regan and Bush I and II tore it to shreds. Same with our healthcare system. All in the name of privatization.
If it actually did result in republicans being crushed under a giant domino, at least we’d have that going for us.
Donald and his Trumpanzee cult are the giant domino, it is crushing us alongside the conservatives who pushed the smallest one.
A lot of voters were. But the grifters running the party just got richer and richer and richer, enabling them to keep regurgitating the same “You’re unhappy because the Big Woke Government Is Too Communist” line ad nauseum.
Certain Republicans did get crushed. The Bush and Cheney families used to be at the center of GOP politics and now they’ve been forced out to the periphery. But others have profited immensely from their fall and risen to take their place. The Christian Dominionist Wing is rapidly consolidating control of the party under the Trump banner, with guys like Mike Johnson and Ted Cruz and Kristi Noem rising into the top ranks of the party while the Bloombergs have had to back away or jump ship to Team D.
well swedes also get value for their taxes. I remember one who would talk about how it drove him nuts coming across pot holes and various broken infrastructure as it would be unacceptable for it to be like that for weeks were he was from.
Right, but there’s a reason we don’t get value for our taxes and that reason is also Republicans. Especially Reagan.
oh yeah and we end up paying more in local taxes than any reduction we ever got on federal ones.
Yeah, re-paving happens all the time here. I visited Massachusetts back in 2019 and was shocked at the abysmal state of the roads.
But Massachusetts has snowy winters and icy conditions which means they need to salt the roads. This is not something that they have to contend with in check notes Sweden?
/S
This year in particular has been frustrating when it comes to snow. I live pretty far south, about two hours south of Stockholm, and we’ve had snow for like half of April. It all melted at the end of March, there were spring flowers, and then we had a shit tonne of snow again, which melted, followed by more snow. So many false starts. 😩
It’s been snow free for a week now, I hope it holds.
Oh cool you live in old Denmark?
Not that far south, haha.
yeah and that was a place with pretty good infrastructure and upkeep for the us.
I’ve heard that MA is a pretty solid place overall. To be fair I loved my stay, but I think the main reason for that was meeting up with a very close friend of mine. I recall this crossing in particular leaving me rather exasperated.
It seems like they’ve since paved over it, however. It is a bit baffling to me that it looks the same in 2012 as it did to me in 2019.
Nah they’ve been taught to hate government. Reagan finalized this with his “the scariest words you can ever hear are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’”. He defined the government and anything the government does as bad and evil. This is the whole “get government to the size you can drown it in a bathtub”. This naturally goes to taxes are feeding the big evil government, so taxes are just as bad.
That and the growing unrest due to wage gaps and our taxes not benefitting our society.
Which is also due to Republicans cutting all social services and resisting new ones.
It’s more like a lot of people don’t feel like they are being represented. I wouldn’t complain if my taxes were housing homeless people or funding space exploration, but instead they’re funding 37 wars.
Plenty of people would complain if their taxes were housing homeless people or funding space exploration though.
they’re funding 37 wars.
Do you have a source for this? I only see 28 global conflicts and 16 wars involving the United States marked as “Ongoing conflict” or “Another result”.
Exactly. We’re also taught not to see the value we receive from our tax paying. And to fear and hate the IRS (especially since we have to file our tsxes
You can see it in the way they display prices in shops.
Always without taxes, to make sure the customer can blame the taxes for the high prices. Even though the tax directly relates to the cost of the product.
There is absolutely no reason why a shop couldn’t show the total prices with taxes included. Because those taxes don’t change daily, nor does the shop move.
Agreed. And it should be considered false advertising. Just like how gas stations in the U.S. have all of their prices end in .9, so gas isn’t $3.00, it’s $3.009. Which you can’t pay because you can’t pay in cent fractions. It just makes the gas look slightly cheaper.
The actual reason is they’re too dumb to understand basic concepts.
The actual reason is because most of our taxes go to bombing foreign countries, subsidizing big businesses, or lining the pockets of the rich. If they went to something that helped actual Americans then I’m sure the perception would change. We need health care, public transportation, and better public education.
I’m less optimistic it would change the perception of “those people”
Radiation is theft seems to be far more popular. They demonize it all in all cases. Entirely brainwashed without thinking about the services that benefit them. sigh
Because here in America, when they take my money, it’s to give away to oil companies and weapons dealers. Not to give us all health care and affordable housing.
Americans actually pay more per capita towards public healthcare than most Europeans, but it just covers so much less (Medicaid and Medicare) because of insane healthcare prices.
Don’t forget bailing out hospitals etc. when people invariably default on their medical debt. On expensive ER bills that only exist because people couldn’t afford to visit a GP five years earlier and get some cheap off the shelf preventive medicine.
Also, and this really shouldn’t be underestimated: Laws concerning everything from food regulations over transportation polity to sports promotion that don’t take people’s health into account because health is a private matter. With socialised healthcare, suddenly all those new fancy bike paths have a tangible ROI in yet another public budget (not just the transportation agency’s one, that is).
On expensive ER bills that only exist because people couldn’t afford to visit a GP five years earlier and get some cheap off the shelf preventive medicine.
A few years ago, I went to the ER because I was feeling abnormally unwell. Sat in the ER for an hour then nurse finally took me into a room. They had to leave to do something immediately after putting me in a room. Sat there for 15 minutes and realized that my body was starting to feel much better so I left.
I got a $3000 bill after insurance. The hospital declined my financial assistant application to get my bill reduced because they said I made too much money. I made $16/hr at the time in an expensive metro area. Ended up paying it off on a 3 year plan.
Important thing to remember, don’t leave after you get put in a room. Get formally discharged, or it becomes AMA, and insurance will always deny coverage.
If you check in at the desk and leave, it’s not a big deal, but once you start to receive care you really should stay.
Two word to solve this: Public Healthcare.
Iinm medicaid/medicare is a government health insurance scheme that only given to selected individuals, and care is provided by private owned hospital, while Europe(and a lot of other place in the world) practice universal public healthcare, where the hospital is owned and run by government. This way, the government wouldn’t get squeezed dry by the exorbitant cost of private healthcare, while at the same time wouldn’t need to pick and choose who is eligible. Private hospital is there to provide value added service for people who can afford it.
In many places in Europe, they have a so-called “treatment guarantee,” which means that if the wait is longer than 30 days for non-emergency treatment and procedures referred by a doctor, you can elect treatment at the private hospital instead of a public hospital. No charge.
For emergencies, you are always treated immediately at either a public or private hospital.
E: I’m mentioning this because I’ve encountered a large number of uninformed Americans who always start crying about “people dying on wait-lists in Europe and Canada unlike in America.” No.
What country is that? Definitely not the UK.
E.g. Denmark.
55% of tax dollars in the united states goes to social programs, social security, and healthcare.
I saw them give trillions of free dollars to companies that had just received three years of extremely vigorous tax cuts.
Yeah, the military spending is actually pretty loosely connected to the shitty safety net. It’s basically hostile to the poor just because. Historically, racial resentment drove a lot of it.
And tax dollars from the US are funding Palestinian genocide through ISRAHELL.
Changing the name of countries and groups every time you mention them is cringe.
Difficult considering social security isn’t a tax. Without looking it up my guess is that number rolls up the 14-15% of SS and Medicare taxes so the real number is lower.
It’s considered a tax by the social security administration.
Source?
Handy Infographic from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO):
.- Total Federal outlays: $6.1 Trillion
- Federal Social Spending
- Social Security: $1.3T
- Medicare: $0.839T
- Medicaid: $0.616T
- Income Security Programs: $0.448T
- Total Social Spending: $3.203T
Math warning:
(3.203T / $6.1T) * 100% = 52.5%So, not quite the previous poster’s 55%, but pretty close. There is also an “Other” column which likely includes other social spending and may have gotten us to that number. But, it’s enough of a mixed bag, and way too much work, to try and pick it all out.
While the US could certainly adjust it’s spending in a lot of good ways, the idea that the US spends “nothing” on social programs is provably false. These numbers also get weird and much harder to pin down when we look at State level taxes and spending. Many years ago, I dug into education spending in the US. And while Federal Education spending is a drop in the bucket, the actual number is pretty large, because it’s considered a State responsibility and each State spends large amounts of money on it.
For example, my home State of Virginia budgets $29.9 Billion for “Health and Human Services” this Fiscal Year 2024 and $25.0 Billion for “Education”, those two line items eating up about 62% of the State budget.
Thanks, and your math makes sense, but I think this is a misinterpretation by op. It’s fair to say that as a percentage of expenditure… But not tax dollars.
Social security gets complicated because it’s set up as a trust fund and has investments that grow to support disbursement rates. It also means that the expenditures should be carved out, same as the inbound tax. This should shift the calculations meaningfully.
Social security is a Ponzi scheme, not a trust fund. There’s no growing pot of money, the inbound payments are directly used to pay current benefits.
The Swedish tax agency is pretty well respected because they have their shit together. When it’s time for us to do our taxes, we get forms sent home already filled in by the tax agency, and for most people those numbers are accurate and it takes less than a minute for us to do our taxes. Send a text message and you’re done. And usually what happens is you get money back.
Not to mention, their taxes go to social programs and can be seen in use, improving the lives of citizens. In the US, our roads are shit, our infrastructure in general is shit, our social programs are a fuckin joke…our tax money isn’t being used for us. That’s the biggest difference.
It’s a lot like that in Belgium and yet people still complain.
Have you ever heard someone speaking French who didn’t list “complaining about stuff” as their number 1 hobby?
Complain about taxes or the tax agency? Sadly, many people in Sweden are complaining about taxes, but the tax agency is still pretty well respected.
Both. All I have to do is click confirm once a year and I’m done.
Send a text message?
If you have no objections to the listed figures, you can simply approve it and be done with it. If you need to add any additional income or special deductions, you add those to the form (usually online) and resubmit.
Yes. In your tax papers there’s a verification number that you text to the tax agency via regular SMS. You can also log on to their website or their app. Or call them and enter the verification number. Or sign the papers and send them back in the mail.
That sounds amazing. In Switzerland, we can do it over the Internet but we have to go over the hassle of putting in all the numbers the State knows very well already. It takes about an hour to get all the certificates (work, insurance, real estate, bank accounts) together, put it all in, and check it.
Isn’t it like that in a lot of Europe nowadays?
In Belgium it is even easier.
Taxes are on the internet, they are already filled in, but you can check them if you want to.
If they are correct (as usual), you don’t have to do anything.
I would hope so but I have no idea, I’ve only done my taxes in Sweden.
In Germany we don’t “need” to do taxes as an employee, but you won’t get anything back if you don’t do them. You can usually just do them in some app, send them to the tax office, get some money back and pay the app a tiny fee for the help.
Then again if you own a house or a company or have any income that isn’t taxed as receiving a salary, you better get a tax consultant and those can be pricey.
It’s pretty much the same in France. People will grumble a lot, obviously (because France, and taxes), but it’s a very simple process for the majority.
Unless you’re one of the happy few that has a lot of varied investments. In which case you’ll have to fill in extra forms. Although your banks will typically send you a precise list of what goes where.
Sweden has historically been ethnically close to homogeneous (until the 20th century, life in Scandinavia was hard, and few wanted to move there) and has a relatively flat social hierarchy, meaning that redistributive taxation to fund services is popular (after all, if everyone needs a specific service, having the government provide it through taxes is an economy of scale). America, meanwhile, was founded on racial slavery, which resulted in a racial hierarchy (i.e., the definition of who counts as “white” shifting over time), and there’s a non-negligible proportion of voters who would resent being taxed extra to help lift those below them in this hierarchy closer to their level.
Tell that to the native Sami peoples.
While your point remains somewhat valid, it’s not actually valid to say “native” in the same sense as “native Americans”.
There were a whole bunch of tribes in the area. Some were more influenced by Europe (swedes, Norwegians) and some less (Finns, Estonian, Sami). Surprise to no one, these tribes living in the southern regions were more successful (easier weather), so they expanded northward and thus rolled over the semi-nomadic Sami in a very nasty, but extremely historically common human way.
it’s not actually valid to say “native” in the same sense as “native Americans”.
It actually is, it’s just that Swedes are just as native as Sami. Which is why usually we’re talking about autochthone minorities in Europe (or some similar term), and if you see a European unironically using terms like “BIPOC” you can be sure they haven’t used their brain in a while because the “I” in that abbreviation is literally the overwhelming majority of the population.
It’s because we get so little for those taxes. If we actually had functional services, I would feel like it’s worth it.
It still wouldn’t for the vast number of brainwashed people who don’t think beyond “the government is taking some of my paycheck!”
Because a lot of those people are the same people who say things like, “why should I have to pay for universal health care when I’m healthy?”
We’re losing that in Sweden though. Public healthcare is becoming more and more under funded. Doctors barely have time to treat patients, so they’re often sending patients home with prescribed paracetamol.
The only way to get proper healthcare nowadays is through private healthcare, if you can afford it. I know many who haven’t gotten proper healthcare until they sought private healthcare. It sucks, because it used to be great.
And people vote for that shit because politicians dangle tax cuts in front of their faces. It’s really sad to see swedes fall for the lower taxes scam, when our entire thing is built on taxes.
Naw, the issue is more with corruption creeping into the public system. Swedish society used to have a high degree of trust within the system due to a rather homogenous culture and relatively short social hierarchy, and as such structures of enforcement were rather unneccessary.
It’s become a lot more pressured as time goes on though, inefficiencies, abuse of public funds, straight up corruption which has created huge hole in the public purse - in addition to a sharp rise in organized crime and tax evasion among small businesses such as restaurants and shops.
Corruption is absolutely on the rise. And many opportunistic assholes are utilizing privatization as a vector to abuse the system. However, people still vote for lower taxes and that is a huge problem, especially when we find ourselves in a situation where so many institutions need more tax funding.
So, what you’re saying is that you’d want to go to a system akin to what the US has? Hmm.
I mean, I’ll personally take affordable, universal healthcare that needs some tweaking over a system that will bankrupt me if I break my arm or, God forbid, get seriously ill.
No I’m saying I want to go back to a public healthcare that doesn’t suck.
“Government doesn’t work, we need less government” said unironically by the person elected to run the government.
It’s like how they’ve installed that DeJoy person to dismantle the Postal Service from inside out and then complain that the Postal Service is having issues, so we should
privatizedonate the business to rich people so their disgusting amounts of wealth can trickle down on our faces or something.
We should stop voting for people who promise to dismantle said services. We also really need to move towards a basic income setup instead of having all of the hoops and paperwork for people to prove they are eligible for whatever it is. In the USA people going on disability are always denied even if they are a paraplegic. We would spend so much less money and other resources if we just made it available to everyone with no proof of eligibility needed.
Also Sweden’s population is about the size of Los Angeles county. Every time I see Scandinavia held up as something to aspire to folks should remember how small and historically homogenous these countries are.
Comparing the US to the EU as a whole is a much more accurate way to look at things, with us states being akin to eu member countries.
There are many different languages spoken in the EU, which alone disqualifies it for any comparison to the US
I feel reasonably confident that there are just as many languages spoken in just Los Angeles county, if there are any parallels to NYC:
Officially, you dumb fuck? Just stop
Why
No you don’t. You pay a little and get a little. Go live in a country where you actually pay a lot and get nothing and then you’ll have a case.
I don’t really care if someone has it worse. We should still strive to do better. I don’t think that’s relevant.
It would be nice to get something for that money. However little or however much it is. Functional services, a social safety net for example. I’d certainly be willing to pay more to have those services. A functioning healthcare system would be nice. I think you would get fewer complaints if the benefits were most obvious.
Same in Canada, at least Quebec, 50% of my taxes go in health care system, I have no family doctor, all doctors are millionaires, nurses make 100k+, people dies in ER after 48h waiting
Education system is a joke. Teachers earn 100k+ too
Roads are potholes
Not many physicians make over a million, and the way provincial governments have set up the bureaucracy around healthcare feeds the high wages, ie: it’s not the nurses caring for patients that are making $100k per year.
About every specialists make 1M
How much of that goes right back to med school loan repayments?
Canada =/= USA, it’s cheaper. A lot of that money goes to personal insurance IIRC
Do you have any sources for that?
even generalist doctor are millionnaire https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2023/11/09/pres-de-270-medecins-millionnaires
In 2021 (the year your article is about) there were 21,176 physicians in the province and 294 made 7 figure salaries. That amounts to less than 1.2% of physicians.
So not all physicians make a million dollars, not even a lot of physicians make a million dollars. It is rare that this happens.
Of course, most are in French, but easy to find any info on this, for instance this 2022 article https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2022/10/18/pres-de-300medecins-millionnaires
Ophtalmologiste 2 603 027 $
Chirurgien général 2 442 354 $
Ophtalmologiste 2 166 048 $
Ophtalmologiste 2 116 473 $
Interniste 2 022 137 $
Radiologiste 2 017 941 $
people dies in ER after 48h waiting
How often does that happen?
Tbh even once is too often. And it has happened all across Canada.
people dies in ER after 48h waiting.
How often does that happen?
ooften.And it has happened all across Canada.
I’m trying to get a feel, as someone who does not live in Canada, as to how often this actually happens. If it’s really an urgent issue, or more hyperbole than anything.
Could you elaborate further on how often this actually happens?
Because Canada’s universal healthcare is funded by the feds and provinces, but administered by the provinces, numbers are not available. But I did find an educated guesstimate from this source put together by two Canadian physicians.
“The extra deaths caused by emergency department crowding are so rarely counted because it’s hard to pinpoint the crowding as the proximate cause of the death. But when you look at populations and population-level data, you clearly see excess hospital deaths when emergency department crowding is worse,” he said.
He and colleague Dr. Paul Atkinson from the department of emergency medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax tried to put a number on what they called a “hidden pandemic” of harm.
They used a formula devised by the U.K. Royal College of Emergency Medicine and The Economist to assess the increased delays in moving patients out of the ERs into the hospital beds in that country.
The U.K. data suggested that between 260 and 500 patients a week may be dying in excess of what would be expected when ERs are crowded.
“If you do simple multiplication based on our population, you would find that over a year, somewhere between 8,000 and 15,000 patients are dying in Canada because of emergency department crowding,” Worrall said.
Thank you.
Edit: Jebus, ‘Thank you’ gets downvotes? Man, tough room. /adjustsshirtcollar
You’re very welcome.
When the term “That’s your tax dollars at work” doesn’t need a /s because it’s just assumed – there’s your problem.
it’s nice to pay taxes if you can actually see the benefits somewhere
And when what you do get to see go towards razing down a faraway city, civilians and all, it doesn’t help either.
My city has great roads and schools.
We also have a high tax rate.
Because Americans let movie stars and reality show con-men drive the train and idolize their asinine tomfoolery like it’s a goddamn team sport. Garbage in garbage out. Why is this even a question, what the fuck. This shit is as obvious as hot pink wallpaper.
American culture is mentally ill.
I think the question is stupid, and I’m not sure why we need to bring the Swedes in. Why not just say Why do Americans Hate Taxes? You’ll get a variety of answers, some in the vein you’ve described.
Me, I live in Jersey (New), and we pay a lot in taxes. I’m pro tax, but at the same time I’m also critical about how my taxes are wasted, and I say that because they certainly are. So it’s a love hate relationship I guess. I say this just because I don’t think it’s fair to assume everyone is all hurr durr small government (when it’s convenient) nonsense. I just want smarter spending. And I live in a state that’s as blue as they come, I vote for them, but our mediocre transit system is on the brink of disaster (like, every election it seems), despite me sending a bunch of my money to NJ, as an example.
Pretty sure they’d be fine with it if trillions and trillions didn’t disappear into military and black budgets (ie transferring money to their friends)
As a US citizen I don’t feel like I get a good ROI on my taxes. It’s a small percentage of upkeep for public things, some below average public education, and a shit ton of weaponry.
I find it funny that people are saying “well my taxes go to things I don’t want to support like oil companies and football teams”
Meanwhile in Texas, the most tax-hating state in the US, they love oil companies and private business eating up public funds.
Ironic.
Perhaps, just maybe, those two things are said by different people.
I never had any real issues with taxes back when groceries, rent and insurance were affordable.
The issues came to light when life started to cost 1.5 times our income, while still having to pay 40% on income and an extra 20% on expenses. I’d rather pay less taxes and eat, when taxes don’t do anything. I also learned that our safety nets are a scam, they set up so many bullshit rules that when i needed it they literally went: “you have the right to receive €800 but you won’t get it, no matter how hard you try”. I tried for a year until i realised our money is just being stolen under the cover of “taxes”.
Yep, if taxes are preventing you from having a minimum of a comfortable standard of living then what is the point? That money should be coming out of the pockets of those that can afford it.
This is why taxes need to be progressive and based on wealth rather than earnings.
At the very least they should allow you to use the “safety nets” if you’re being taxed below the comfort level.
Where I’m from, we had a wealth tax, but when it was removed in 2007, it only accounted for 0.43 % of all taxes because it was too easy to avoid.
Maybe people wouldn’t hate taxes if they were put to good use, not squandered on shit we don’t want and corruption. We have to watch as all our taxes go to pay corrupt politicians hundreds of thousands of dollars and cover all their expenses, meanwhile this year our elementary and middle schools are getting their sports/music/art classes cut because there isn’t enough budget.
That’s a surprise. In most US schools they’ll cut STEM and language and have rolling blackouts before they cut sports.
You’re thinking high school and college.
Americans hate this one Swede trick.
I mean, its an inaccurate title.
The Swedes have had a number of popular tax revolts in living memory. The big one was back in 1979 (about the same time Americans and Brits were having their own tax revolt) when they threw out the socialist government and brought in a bunch of neoliberal reformers.
Swedes overhauled their tax code in 1985, 1991, and 1994 and then did so again in the 2004 when they abolished inheritance and gift taxes with a unanimous vote.
Until fairly recently, Sweden has been undergoing the same set of neoliberal policies common to western nations. But thanks to being a relatively small economy with an outsized O&G export market, they’ve skated by what industrial centers in the American Midwest and agg sectors in France and the UK have suffered.
Sweden isn’t a high-tax state, its a petro-state with the appearance of high taxes.
Oil and gas products account for 4.2% of Sweden’s exports. The gas exports alone almost rival those of dairy and eggs! Truly a petrostate if I ever saw one
Are you perhaps thinking of a different country?
Oil and gas products account for 4.2% of Sweden’s exports.
Refined Petroleum is their single largest export, at $13B or 7% of gross exports.
That… doesn’t seem significant enough to justify the claim that they’re a petrol state.
Oil and gas products account for 4.2% of Sweden’s exports. The gas exports alone almost rival those of dairy and eggs! Truly a petrostate if I ever saw one
Well the largest category is
- Machinery, Nuclear reactors and boilers. The nuclear part of this in Sweden is quite small so machinery is the big part. 14%. Second is:
- Vechicles, Other than railway, trans. E.g. the later large Car and Lorrie, Truck manufacturers, Volvo, Volvo Cars and Scania. also about 14% The third is:
- Electrical, electronic equipment, with large companies like Ericsson. 8.7% Then on fort place:
- Mineral Fuels, Oils, distillation products, 7.4% Thou there are no internal sources for this is mostly refining of imported gods.
It’s only 7.4% if you’re discounting the large service sector and looking only at goods (which may be what people mean by “exports”, idk). That’s why our numbers differ, it’s 4.2% of all exports, and 7.4% of exported goods.
I can’t find support for this?
(7% is OK, but it’s far from the largest export, not mentioning it’s not swedish oil)
There’s quite a lot of Swedes that complain about the taxes here still though, sadly enough
When you only know Sweden, you don’t know how awesome you have it.
Travel helps people appreciate things, sometimes.
