NEWS Researchers Karen Boll, Benedicte Brögger and Lotta Björklund Larsen, all working in the FairTax WP6, teamed up with Tuulia Potka-Soininen from Jyväskylä University to meet with analysts from the Nordic Tax Agencies and researchers from Jyväskylä University.
The objective of the workshop, that was held at the Finnish tax agency Verohallinto’s office in Helsinki, was to present the research in progress within WP6. With this meeting, WP6 accomplished deliverable 6.3.
The participating analysts from the Nordic Tax Agencies are part of the Nordic Agenda group. The purpose of this group is to promote Nordic interdisciplinary research on taxation. Four years ago Karen and Lotta were invited to one of their biannual meetings to discuss research ideas and collaboration possibilities. The discussions were very fruitful, and eventually resulted in Karen, Lotta and Benedicte participating in the successful FairTax project application.
“WP6 are studying how tax agencies are working with co-operative tax compliance in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and we are also giving a background of existing research in the field. We researchers have worked hard to find a common ground in order to make our projects comparable in the light of how the agencies in the four countries works with co-operative compliance. The projects, which all analyses proactive ways of working with tax compliance in relation to large corporations, can fill gaps in existing research on co-operative tax compliance.” Says Lotta Björklund Larsen, Linköping University, coordinator of the WP6 research group.
The workshop agenda contained presentations on work and analyses performed so far, as well as a presentation by Karen Boll on the status of international research on co-operative compliance. The group had productive and constructive discussions of the research performed and the FairTax researchers received valuable input from the tax agency representatives about issues that deserve further investigation.
“In our research we show that the rhetoric from policy makers and tax agencies about co-operative tax compliance is strong and convincing, but that practice shows that the reality is more subtle and complex. We do this by providing detailed qualitative studies and by focusing on all stakeholders including policy makers, tax agencies and participating corporations. Thereby we can show that a new trend is emerging which may imply a radical transformation of the relationship between tax agency and tax payers.” Lotta Björklund Larsen continues.
With all valuable comments from the Nordic Tax Agencies analysts and fellow researchers from Jyväskylä, WP7 continue to work toward the final reports that will be delivered fall 2017.
Editor: Elin Andersson