The long time perspective on tax principles and tax policies in this discussion paper identifies some of the most important and relevant contexts for major Swedish tax reforms from 1902 until the present time. Until the 1991 tax reform principles played a significant role in tax law design. The relation between principles and legal concepts was quite consistent.
However, the 1991 tax reform seems to mark the end of a period when Swedish governments, with a certain regularity, initiated tax reforms to tackle contemporary economic and social challenges. In spite of several initiatives, proposed in well investigated study commission reports, no comprehensive tax reforms have been launched during a quarter of a decade. Instead hundreds of small, partial reforms have been implemented in tax law. Together with a new budgetary framework these gradual changes have changed the overall revenue basis for the public sector and the welfare state. In tandem with this development, the policy discourse on taxing for economic growth has increasingly gained in influence.
Even though environmental sustainability, and later also fiscal sustainability, have been prominent in the design of the tax system, we also note that Swedish tax policy has potential to further integrate important economic and social sustainability goals such as gender equality, social inclusion and income distribution.
A result of the study is to show the complexity of a national agenda on tax policy. Legally enshrined goals and principles cannot easily be superseded with tax policies on a supranational level, particularly if these policies are solely drawn from macroeconomic analysis on the mechanisms and trajectories of economic crises.