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.
