IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-137-47815-3_6.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Swedish Wealth Taxation (1911–2007)

In: Swedish Taxation

Author

Listed:
  • Gunnar Rietz
  • Magnus Henrekson

Abstract

Modern wealth taxation was introduced in Sweden in 1911 by the 1910 Ordinance of Income and Wealth Taxation, SFS 1910:115.1 Various kinds of duties and fees on estates had existed previously, but only for small and specific parts of the tax base and population strata.2 The 1910 reform conferred an important role to the ability-to-pay principle in the Swedish income tax system, thus making it natural to take advantage of the greater ability to pay tax that possession of wealth gave the taxpayer (SOU 1969:54, 78).3 A second motive was to compensate for the erosion of other tax bases and growing government financing needs. Likewise, several types of wealth tax were introduced during and between the World Wars in order to fund the military. Finally, beginning in the early 1930s, the wealth tax was motivated as a means of redistribution (SOU 1969:54, 8–9).4

Suggested Citation

  • Gunnar Rietz & Magnus Henrekson, 2015. "Swedish Wealth Taxation (1911–2007)," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Magnus Henrekson & Mikael Stenkula (ed.), Swedish Taxation, chapter 0, pages 267-302, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-47815-3_6
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137478153_6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gunnar Rietz & Magnus Henrekson & Daniel Waldenström, 2015. "Swedish Inheritance and Gift Taxation (1885–2004)," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Magnus Henrekson & Mikael Stenkula (ed.), Swedish Taxation, chapter 0, pages 223-265, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Gunnar Rietz & Dan Johansson & Mikael Stenkula, 2015. "Swedish Labor Income Taxation (1862–2013)," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Magnus Henrekson & Mikael Stenkula (ed.), Swedish Taxation, chapter 0, pages 35-122, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Mervyn A. King & Don Fullerton, 1984. "The United Kingdom," NBER Chapters, in: The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany, pages 31-86, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Steven J. Davis & Magnus Henrekson, 1997. "Industrial Policy, Employer Size, and Economic Performance in Sweden," NBER Chapters, in: The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model, pages 353-398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Mervyn A. King & Don Fullerton, 1984. "Introduction to "The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany"," NBER Chapters, in: The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany, pages 1-6, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Ohlsson, Henry, 2011. "The legacy of the Swedish gift and inheritance tax, 1884–2004," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 539-569, December.
    7. Mervyn A. King & Don Fullerton, 1984. "The United States," NBER Chapters, in: The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany, pages 193-267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Mikael Stenkula & Dan Johansson & Gunnar Du Rietz, 2014. "Marginal taxation on labour income in Sweden from 1862 to 2010," Scandinavian Economic History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(2), pages 163-187, June.
    9. Mervyn A. King & Don Fullerton, 1984. "The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number king84-1.
    10. Freeman, Richard B. & Topel, Robert H. & Swedenborg, Birgitta (ed.), 1997. "The Welfare State in Transition," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226261782.
    11. Mikael Stenkula, 2015. "Taxation of Real Estate in Sweden (1862–2013)," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Magnus Henrekson & Mikael Stenkula (ed.), Swedish Taxation, chapter 0, pages 303-327, Palgrave Macmillan.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gunnar Rietz & Dan Johansson & Mikael Stenkula, 2015. "Swedish Labor Income Taxation (1862–2013)," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Magnus Henrekson & Mikael Stenkula (ed.), Swedish Taxation, chapter 0, pages 35-122, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Florian Scheuer & Joel Slemrod, 2021. "Taxing Our Wealth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(1), pages 207-230, Winter.
    3. Magnus Henrekson & Daniel Waldenström, 2016. "Inheritance taxation in Sweden, 1885–2004: the role of ideology, family firms, and tax avoidance," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(4), pages 1228-1254, November.
    4. Ohlsson, Henry & Roine, Jesper & Waldenström, Daniel, 2014. "Inherited Wealth over the Path of Development: Sweden, 1810–2010," Working Paper Series 1033, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    5. Arun Advani & Hannah Tarrant, 2021. "Behavioural responses to a wealth tax," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(3-4), pages 509-537, September.
    6. Henrekson, Magnus & Stenkula, Mikael, 2015. "Swedish Taxation since 1862: An Overview," Working Paper Series 1052, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 10 Sep 2015.
    7. Mikael Stenkula, 2015. "Taxation of Real Estate in Sweden (1862–2013)," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Magnus Henrekson & Mikael Stenkula (ed.), Swedish Taxation, chapter 0, pages 303-327, Palgrave Macmillan.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Henrekson, Magnus & Stenkula, Mikael, 2015. "Swedish Taxation since 1862: An Overview," Working Paper Series 1052, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 10 Sep 2015.
    2. Stenkula Mikael, 2014. "Swedish Taxation in a 150-year Perspective," Nordic Tax Journal, Sciendo, vol. 2014(2), pages 10-42, November.
    3. Gunnar Rietz & Dan Johansson & Mikael Stenkula, 2015. "Swedish Capital Income Taxation (1862–2013)," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Magnus Henrekson & Mikael Stenkula (ed.), Swedish Taxation, chapter 0, pages 123-178, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Niklas Elert & Magnus Henrekson, 2019. "The collaborative innovation bloc: A new mission for Austrian economics," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 32(4), pages 295-320, December.
    5. Magnus Henrekson & Jesper Roine, 2007. "Promoting Entrepreneurship in the Welfare State," Chapters, in: David B. Audretsch & Isabel Grilo & A. Roy Thurik (ed.), Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurship Policy, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Henrekson, Magnus & Rosenberg, Nathan, 2000. "Incentives for Academic Entrepreneurship and Economic Performance: Sweden and the United States," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 362, Stockholm School of Economics.
    7. Ulf Jakobsson & Magnus Henrekson, 2001. "Where Schumpeter was nearly right - the Swedish model and Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 331-358.
    8. Henrekson, Magnus & Jakobsson, Ulf, 2003. "The Swedish Model of Corporate Ownership and Control in Transition," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 521, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 15 Apr 2003.
    9. Henrekson, Magnus & Rosenberg, Nathan, 2001. "Designing Efficient Institutions for Science-Based Entrepreneurship: Lessons from the US and Sweden," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 207-231, June.
    10. Davidsson, Per & Henrekson, Magnus, 2002. "Determinants of the Prevalence of Start-Ups and High-Growth Firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 81-104, September.
    11. Heyman, Fredrik & Norbäck, Pehr-Johan & Persson, Lars & Andersson, Fredrik, 2019. "Has the Swedish business sector become more entrepreneurial than the US business sector?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(7), pages 1809-1822.
    12. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "Firm Growth, Institutions and Structural Transformation," Ratio Working Papers 150, The Ratio Institute.
    13. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 1999. "Institutional Effects on the Evolution of the Size Distribution of Firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 11-23, February.
    14. Magnus Henrekson, 2005. "Entrepreneurship: a weak link in the welfare state?," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 14(3), pages 437-467, June.
    15. Edquist, Harald & Henrekson, Magnus, 2013. "Product Market Reforms and Incentives to Innovate in Sweden," Working Paper Series 986, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    16. Davis, Steven J. & Henrekson, Magnus, 1997. "Explaining National Differences in the Size and Industrial Distribution of Employment," Working Paper Series 482, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    17. Henrekson Magnus, 2017. "Taxation of Swedish Firm Owners: The Great Reversal from the 1970s to the 2010s," Nordic Tax Journal, Sciendo, vol. 2017(1), pages 26-46, January.
    18. Niklas Elert & Dan Johansson & Mikael Stenkula & Niklas Wykman, 2023. "The evolution of owner-entrepreneurs’ taxation: five tax regimes over a 160-year period," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 517-540, April.
    19. Henrekson, Magnus & Jakobsson, Ulf, 2001. "The Transformation of Ownership Policy and Structure in Sweden: Convergence towards the Anglo-Saxon Model?," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 469, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 19 Sep 2002.
    20. Johansson, Dan & Stenkula, Mikael & Wykman, Niklas, 2018. "The Taxation of Private Foundations in Sweden 1862–2018," Working Paper Series 1245, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 02 Oct 2019.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Family Firm; Reduction Rule; Firm Owner; Withdrawal Percentage; Extra Dividend;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • K34 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Tax Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-47815-3_6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.