Exchanges Create Relations

Abstract

There are numerous explanations for why we pay tax, an important aspect being the relations, and expectations, that taxpaying is seen to create. This chapter revisits various research traditions on tax compliance and proposes four different ways in which it addresses reciprocity: tit-for-tat, copycat , fair share and equality. Sweden, a 'modern' welfare state, has a well-esteemed tax collecting agency that has worked long and deliberately to enhance its standing in society. Despite the agency being liked, tax avoidance is also going on. This ethnography travels full circle around seemingly opposing actors on the Swedish tax arena, at the Swedish Tax Agency and among a group of tax-avoiding Swedes, listening to their stories and justifications-allowing for a thorough understanding of reciprocal relations invoked by carrying out taxation. Keywords Reciprocity in tax compliance research • Thinking with reciprocity • Ethnography of taxation and tax avoidance Those who exchange presents with one another Remain friends the longest If things turn out successfully (Mauss 2002 [1990]: 2) Thus ends the forty-first stanza in Hávamál, one of the many poems in the Scandinavian Edda.