There is a deep misunderstanding in all discussion about our Swedish taxes and it can look something like this: State and municipality collect more tax from the rich and less from ordinary wage earners in order to equalize society in that way. He who has a lot must pay more than the poor.
This is false.
In fact, it is the poor who pay more and the rich who get more.
Now Elisabeth Svantesson (M) has started planning for new tax cuts. They will, just like before, give much to those who have much and little to those who have little.
This depends on that one uses a false concept called “tax pressure”. When you do that, it turns out that high-income earners pay slightly more in tax in percentage terms. The tax for someone who earns SEK 40,000 can then be a few percent higher than for someone who earns SEK 25,000. Rich give more, poor give less.
However, this is a very one-eyed way of discussing taxes. The important thing is how the tax works in reality, that is, what you actually pay in tax after the necessities of life – food, housing and so on – have been paid. This is called tax according to carrying capacity and is the tax that left-wing forces must show and discuss when right-wing parties talk about reduced taxes.
Because of course you can lower taxes. But how do you do it fairly?
In reality, the poor pay higher taxes than the high earners. This is what a simple diagram looks like, which is taken from the upcoming update of the “Economic handbook” (which you can read more about at www.etc.se/ekonomihandboken).
Tax pressure according to carrying capacity for different families
As you see has a single mother very high tax on what she earns beyond “necessary basic consumption”. (The words come from Swedbank’s annual calculations.) After paying rent, electricity, food and some clothes, there is a small amount left, but 87 percent of it is taken in tax.
A working family with two children has a higher amount left after the essentials have been paid and then pays 65 percent in tax. While the high income earner gets away with 59 percent.
In a just society, this would of course be the other way around. After everyone pays their necessary basic expenses, of course the tax should be lower for the single mother than for the high income family.
The whole tax discussion is upside down. It is not the rich or high income earners who have the highest “tax burden”. Without low-income earners.
When the government now plans tax cuts on income, this will be seen. If the tax is reduced by some percentage, it will put more in the wallet of the rich than the poor.
This means that left-wing forces will criticize the bourgeois tax policy with every right. People will point to all the shortcomings we have in care and care and school and the deficits in the regions and municipalities will be an argument against the tax cuts.
But it will probably be a fairly unsuccessful criticism after you start from two incorrect theses. On the one hand, they accept the way taxes are calculated, where people’s basic costs are not taken into account, it is not a tax according to carrying capacity that prevails even from radical voices.
In that case, a different tax system would be proposed where tax on basic consumption is greatly reduced. (If you lower VAT on food, it benefits the poor more than the rich.)
But criticism can too hit wrong because it is not a lack of money that causes the bourgeois to cut school, welfare and care. They can do that because the public sector has a huge financial surplus. When Anders Borg (M) lowered the tax significantly in 2006, it was hardly noticed in public budgets because the public then had a financial surplus of 600 billion accumulated by the red-greens.
Being against tax cuts today is not very smart. Better to be in favor of tax cuts based on tax according to carrying capacity. It will then automatically force an equalization where even the rich pay 80 percent of the money they have left after basic consumption.
We know from sociological surveys that the Swedish people are willing to pay taxes. In addition, the acceptance of high taxes is higher among those who have little. The biggest tax complaint in Sweden is among venture capitalists who take out billions in compensation and then cheat the tax. The richer, the worse tax morale simply.
But to transform Sweden into an equal country, tax cuts are needed for most people and tax increases for a third of the population.
We should not be against reduced taxes. We must be against poorly reduced taxes.
But the climate then?
The defense? The research? Railways and electrification?
We do not pay them via tax.
They are financed via the Riksbank and via already generated financial surplus in the public sector.
Investments are something you do that pays off through increased activity. Better railways are profitable in themselves.
We should not be against reduced taxes.
We must be against poorly reduced taxes.
