Allianser och Illusioner : Socialdemokratin och konsumtionsbeskattningen

Sammanfattning: From 1960 and onwards the Swedish tax system has gradually changed from mostly progressive to mostly proportional and heavily dependent on taxation on consumer goods. This dissertation aims to describe and explain the role of Social Democracy in this process by studying the forming and further development of the omsättningsskatt, later transformed to a proper value added tax mervärdesskatt (VAT), from an historical institutional perspective. Previous research has considered these taxes as mainly financing tools, linked to the building of the well-fare state. While taxes are crucial in the financing of public expenditure, I claim a more complex background to the consumer tax, thereby highlighting a neo-corporative income political setting, hitherto not paid attention to, between a Social Democratic Government and the Trade Union Confederation (LO).Empirically the dissertation covers a period from the late 1950:s up to 2006. Drawing on an extensive material, including protocols from the major decision-making bodies within the Social Democratic Party, I demonstrate how Social Democracy, in a constant interplay between the two power centres, Government and LO, has formed a tax structure closely aligned with LO income political goals of closing the gap between blue and white-collar workers. In the formative moment, LO agreed to restrain wages and was rewarded by targeted cuts in income tax, transfer payments and an extensive labour market policy, made possible by the new tax. In the years to come the resulting informal institutional structure was increasingly strained as tactical-strategical considerations tempted the Government to use the tax instruments for vote- and office-seeking purposes. Not without difficulties both parties, however, succeeded in upholding the informal institutional arrangements until 1986 when internal discontent within LO set forces in motion. Social Democratic tax policy, until now considered beneficial for trade union members, was rejected and in conjunction with an ideational paradigmatic shift towards supply-side economics, the institution was pushed towards a critical junction and a new institutional setting.The VAT-ties to LO were eventually cut, permitting the Government to align the VAT-policy with an overriding goal of office-seeking through alliance building. From 1991 and onwards a highly political- strategical VAT-policy has thus resulted not only in a differentiated VAT, but also in numerous tax cuts on minor items of symbolic importance to various political parties. The strategy has hollowed the tax revenues but proved successful in forging and upholding temporary political alliances in Parliament.The main empirical findings – the presence of a neo-corporatist income policy and the pursuing of a class-based tax policy – departs from earlier research and shed new light on what we call “The Swedish model”. The institutional conclusions are, however, in line with an historical institutional perspective stressing the importance of a formative moment, path dependency, ideas as agents of change and the theory of gradual institutional development, a theory that might benefit from further theorising in the interplay between formal and informal veto points.