A new study by the Swedish organization Företagarna proves that small businesses are the big losers among tax payers. The larger firms pay less taxes. How come?
It should be beneficial to be employed in Sweden and we have to increase job opportunities and employ more staff in order to revive the economy.
The total taxes in 2008 amounted to nearly 1500 billion SEK. This figure include payroll taxes, corporate taxes and employee income taxes. Corporate taxation has certainly been reduced but it is still too high compared to other countries where taxes are much lower.
Small businesses and their employees along with self-employed is contributing 231 billion SEK when adding all the tax amounts. This is approximately 15.5 percent of all tax revenues.
The larger companies with 49-249 employees pay only 110.7 billion SEK in the corresponding figures.
The second-largest companies pay 53.2 billion and the largest, with over 500 employees, pay 197.9 billion SEK.
This means that the small businesses account for the largest sum of taxes and thus stand for the biggest part of Sweden's tax payments.
It is therefore not surprising that small businesses establish on markets other than Sweden today. In order to reduce tax payments, it is a sometimes a necessity for many of Sweden's small businesses to establish operations on markets such as China, Malta and the UAE where tax costs are significantly lower.
This is a problem due to the fact that small businesses account for 99 percent of the companies in Sweden.
Cecilia Helland