Swedish Taxpayers' Association

The Swedish Taxpayers' Association (Skattebetalarnas förening) is an association and taxpayers union in Sweden which advocates low taxes and efficiency in the public sector. The association was first founded in 1921 and since then has grown very fast. It issues its own magazine the Common Sence (Sunt Förnuft) four times a year. The current chairman of the board is Pia Kinhult and the CEO (since October 2016) is Christian Ekström.

The association was first founded in spring 1921 under the initiative of Marcus Wallenberg Senior, former CEO of the Stockholms Enskilda Bank, to promote better management of tax revenue. The founders were mainly business leaders who concerned the political leaders and “the ignorant mass” would undermine the entrepreneurship and economic progress without an independent organization offering supervision. Their using methods were simple and direct: reveal the waste and misuse of tax revenue in the public sector; convince the public that the heavy taxation will bring threat to work, saving and entrepreneurship. At the end of 1925, the association has grown into an influential organization with over 40,000 members. And later, it also became the model for similar organizations in Denmark, Finland, and Norway.

Just as the tax foundation in the United States began to calculate the “tax freedom day” in 1971, the association also began its own calculation for Sweden at the same year.

In the 1980s, the association held a series of campaigns for tax reduction. One of its slogans was “half left” (hälften kvar) at the time. This probably is one of the factors that led to a significant reform in Sweden called “tax reform of the century” in 1990 and 1991, introduced by the then Social Democratic government.

Also, in 2007, the abolition of the property tax and the wealth tax by alliance government was, to some degree, due to the association’s long-term campaign together with other organizations like the House Owners National Association (Villaägarnas riksförbund) and the Shareholders’ Association (Aktiespararna).

In 2016, the association revealed to the public that 200,000 retirees missed the promised tax relief because of the wrong calculation from the government institutions.

The association is a member of several international taxpayers organizations like the World Taxpayers Association and the Taxpayers Association of Europe.

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Wikipedia