Tom Heberlein | Vox

I’m an American living in Sweden. Here’s why I came to embrace the higher taxes.

2020-01-09T17:10:04-05:00

I was visiting the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, a 23-island archipelago in Lake Superior, when suddenly I found myself pining for Stockholm. Why? Because standing on the boat dock in Bayfield, Wisconsin, I realized that the 23,000-island Stockholm archipelago is more accessible to me, an American, than my own 23-island national park.

These wilderness islands with haunting sea caves are accessible only by tour boat at a cost of $151 for a family of two adults and three children. There is no free 15-minute ride across the strait to Basswood Island closest to the mainland, nor a $10 shuttle between the islands, as there would be in Sweden where a heavily subsidized ferry system makes the Stockholm archipelago available to all citizens — as well as to American tourists.

Swedish taxes are easy to pay, rational, and efficient. Best of all, rather than take away opportunities, Swedish taxes expand them.

It seems that Americans would rather have inaccessibility to public places and crumbling infrastructure than pay more in taxes, right? After all, every American seems to know that taxes in Sweden are high and that they want nothing to do with high.

My wife and I have been dividing our time between jobs in Sweden and Wisconsin for the past dozen years, and I’m here to tell you that taxes in Sweden are not that high. To my surprise, I found that there are lots of things to love about the Swedish tax system. Swedish taxes are easy to pay, rational, and efficient. Best of all, rather than take away opportunities, Swedish taxes expand them.

Here are six reasons I have come to love Swedish taxes.

1) Swedish income taxes are not much higher than US taxes — but they give you an education

US critics say that Swedes pay 56 percent — so the government takes over half of your money. This is not true — 56 percent is the marginal tax rate, i.e. what high earners pay on income over a certain amount in both state and local taxes. Only 15 percent of Swedes pay tax at this rate. It turns out the average Swede pays less than 27 percent of his or her income in direct taxes. As I’ve written elsewhere, my wife and I pay about 22 percent of our US income in taxes. Our Swedish income tax was 31 percent. So, yes, our income taxes in Sweden were higher than in the US, but we still paid less than one-third in tax.

And you get far more for your taxes than you do in the US. In Sweden, college is free and students get a housing stipend. A colleague’s daughter, Kerstin, just completed a five-year dental program. Her family paid nothing for her education. The Swedish government gave her $340 a month to live on when she was in school and the right to borrow $700 more a month, which she did. After five years, she graduated with a debt of $37,153.

In the US, dental students graduate with an average of $215,000 in debt from dental school alone.

2) Tax forms come already filled out

Our US federal and state forms tax forms were more than 30 pages long last year, downloaded completely blank. During the two weeks we’ll spend in Wisconsin this summer, our main job will be to get our taxes done.

I’ll wade through stacks of bank and credit card records line by line, documenting all professional income beyond our wages and scanning for every possible business or charitable deduction. Once this is done, we — like the majority of US taxpayers — will hire a tax professional who charges us $500 to review and co-sign our work.

Tax-preparation services cost American taxpayers more than $32 billion per year. My wife, Betty, and I each have a PhD, but that’s not enough to understand IRS instructions. Finally, with a great sigh of relief, our marriage still intact, we’ll sign the forms and send them to the IRS.

Of course, despite our great efforts, we don’t know whether the IRS is going to be happy or not. We might get audited and have to dig up all this stuff again, because the government has three years to check and revise our returns.

In Sweden, the four-page tax form comes in the mail already filled out. On a Saturday morning, Betty and I take our coffee to the couch and review the forms. Seeing they look reasonable, as they always do, we “sign” with a text from our phones. In 15 minutes we are done. We don’t have to hire a tax consultant, and we avoid fights about whether a print cartridge bought at the drugstore is a business expense or not.

The Swedes expect their government to be efficient, and the tax authority is. Only 11 percent of the Swedish taxpayers say it is NOT easy to fill out their forms. I can’t imagine what a similar survey question would show in the US.

3) There is no property tax

Property taxes go back to the founding of the United States. They are administered by local governments and most go to pay for schools, local roads, and other services. They range from a high of 2.38 percent in New Jersey to a low of 0.28 percent in Hawaii. Property taxes hurt older citizens, whose incomes are not going up but whose property taxes are. In our great American tradition of making taxes hurt, Wisconsin property tax bills come in a lump sum just before Christmas. The envelope might as well say, “I am from the government, and I am here to make you miserable.”

When the conservative government, favoring lower taxes, came to power in Sweden in 2006 one of its first steps was abolish the property tax and replace it with a fixed fee. The real estate fee for services is 7,112 SEK per house ($825 at current exchange rates).

This is the same for everyone no matter what the assessed value of the dwelling. The fee is $12 a month for our co-op apartment in Stockholm. If we owned the same property in Madison, our taxes would be $18,000 a year.

The author and his wife hiking in Sweden. (Tom Heberlein)

4) Sales taxes in Sweden are higher — but less noticeable

Swedes and many other Europeans are grumpy when they visit the US, buy something for $10, and the clerk asks for $10.55. Just as we make our income tax process miserable and the property tax bill shows up just before Christmas, sales taxes are an add-on, which makes you notice them more.

Sales taxes are high in Sweden, but you don’t see them, and that makes them easier to pay. If something costs 100 kronor, you pay the 100 kronor! Only when you look at the receipt do you see that it costs 80 kronor and 20 kronor for VAT (value-added tax). Many things are taxed at lower rates — 12 percent to have dinner out or buy groceries, 6 percent (only half a percent higher than our sales tax in Madison) for books and tickets to cultural events and in-country travel. Health related items: zero percent.

It is true that sales taxes are regressive; poor people pay a higher proportion of their income in this tax. In the US, a 25 percent sales tax would have to be offset with some kind of subsidies for our many poor. But because Sweden has a narrower income distribution, its sales tax is less regressive than in the US.

5) We get cash instead of deductions

One of the reasons US income tax preparation is so awful is that we try to reward certain activities by providing a tax deduction. If you do some good deed (like putting in a solar panel) and if you can find the receipt and documentation (I am thinking ahead to our summer “tax vacation” in the Wisconsin), then you can list a number on Form H, line 36, that will lower your taxes.

Does this feel good? Do you feel rewarded for your solar panel? Or is it just another damn number on a tax form?

If the Swedish government wants you to do something, they give you the money. For example: Having children is good for the society and costs parents money. In the US, you get a deduction on your income tax for dependents. In Sweden, you get a check every month and you can use it to buy shoes. For one child you get $120 a month and up to $620 for four children. Every parent gets a check.

The process is simple, fair, totally clear, and you don’t have to do anything on your tax form. The money comes when you need it —not a year or more later hidden in a tax refund check.

In Sweden, the four-page tax form comes in the mail already filled out. In 15 minutes we are done.

Another example: To stimulate the economy in 2008, Sweden’s parliament approved a “rotavdrag” as a temporary job stimulus paying up to 50 percent of the labor costs for household repairs. As a result, the Swedish IRS paid its share of our recent remodeling bill — and I didn’t have to do a bit of paperwork. When I got the final remodeling bill, there was a deduction of 50,000 kronor for my wife and 50,000 for me (the maximum allowed). I asked if I was supposed to pay this. “Oh, no,” the contractor said. “Just pay the remainder, and the Swedish IRS will send me their share.”

6) High taxes give me more choices and freedoms

David Brooks, in a New York Times editorial, argues that if Americans paid European-style high taxes, it would “weaken the ability of members of the middle class to make choices about their own lives.”

Maybe Brooks needs to live abroad. Guys like Brooks seem to be proud that tax revenues in the US are only 26 percent of GDP (the third lowest of all countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) while in Sweden they are 43 percent.

But tax dollars are not burned — they are used to provide collective goods that are beyond the reach of any individual and that benefit everyone. These collective goods give the middle class more choices, not fewer.

Not having to pay for college gives the best and the brightest the opportunity to attend any school they choose — equalizing opportunity on merit, not parents’ wealth.

No matter how rich Bill Gates is, he cannot buy a hiking trail system in Seattle like those we take for granted in Stockholm. I get to use it for free and have more choices for hiking than I can ever enjoy in Wisconsin. The family of five I witnessed waiting on the dock to visit the Apostle Islands was powerless to see them. Our national park, accessible to the few but not the many, is but one casualty of our low taxes.

Another casualty? Our public transportation system. Betty and I used to live the village of Lodi, about 25 miles from Madison. This being America, I was free to travel to Madison however and whenever I wanted, as long as it was by private automobile. There was (and is) no bus service to Madison. Even though railroad tracks run right through the village, there is no commuter rail service either.

If this were a suburb of Stockholm or any other European city of 250,000, there would be train service and bus service several times an hour. These are the choices Europeans have that we don’t, because they devote more of their income to collective goods.

If we value freedom, those of us who drive cars should pay higher gas taxes so that those who are old, infirm, too poor to have a car, or want to reduce their environmental impact can have fast and efficient bus and train service. Besides the moral issue of providing freedom of choice, there is a great economic value. If we had bus and train service to Madison, the value of all of the real estate in Lodi would shoot up, and our crumbling downtown would have a shot at a future.

The 33 million Americans who are still not covered by health insurance don’t have much choice when they get sick, unless you think, “Your money or your life?” is a choice. Paradoxically it turns out the bloated, heavily lobbied, privatized US system spends more tax money ($4,437) per person than Sweden’s socialized health care ($3,184).

This is due to Swedish efficiency rather than poor service. I do get to choose my doctor, have high-quality care a short walk from my home, same-day appointments and short waits when I walk in unannounced. And one day my physician himself phoned to tell me I had left my gloves in his office — it was my choice to walk back and get them.

I am not burdened by Swedish taxes. In fact, paying more allows me to increase my quality of life in a big way. That’s why I believe that if we all paid higher taxes with less pain in the collection, more of us would be granted the American version of freedom we have been promised.

Tom Heberlein divides his time between Wisconsin and Sweden, where he is working on a book, Falling in Love with Sweden (One Mistake at a Time). He is a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

Sweden may have the answer to America’s gun problem

2016-08-03T10:37:30-04:00

A Swedish hunter. | Courtesy of Tom Heberlein

Twenty years ago, I headed to Sweden for a sabbatical year to study the country’s attitudes toward hunting. As a responsible hunter, I brought my own guns — an old 12-gauge shotgun and a Remington .30-06 — because I didn’t want to miss a shot or wound an animal using unfamiliar, borrowed firearms.

As a sociologist I thought that bringing my own firearms would give me some firsthand experience with European gun laws. That happened sooner than I expected.

My employer, the Swedish Hunters Association, had filled out all the paperwork (including paying the tax), so there was no problem getting my guns into the country. But I couldn’t take them to my apartment, as I would have in the United States.

Instead, like all guns in Sweden, they had to be stored in a locked safe, so colleagues took them directly to the wildlife research lab that has a walk-in vault to store firearms.

I began to think more about the responsibilities of gun owners rather than gun owners’ rights

Before I could hunt, there was the trip to the rifle range where my shooting scores were registered. While this is not required by law, I was told that landowners would not let me hunt moose, nor would a hunting team accept me, unless I showed I could hit a target — not just a paper target but a full-size plywood moose at 100 yards, standing and moving.

Much of what happened when I went hunting in Sweden was strange to me — hunting birds in the mountains with unloaded shotguns for example, stopping the moose hunt after a couple of hours to sit around a campfire roasting hot dogs, and then butchering a trophy moose without taking even one picture. (Here’s my report on the differences in Swedish and American hunting.)

Being in this new setting that was much like and yet so different from Wisconsin got me thinking about hunting in new ways. I began to think more about the responsibilities of gun owners rather than gun owners’ rights. I also learned that it was possible to maintain a lively hunting culture along with mandatory gun registration and required safe storage.

As we face a firearm crisis in America today, it’s time for hunters to stop hiding behind the Second Amendment and claim the moral high ground as our nation’s responsible gun owners.

The nation demands some action, and we, more than 13 million gun owners who hunt, are in a unique position to lead the way. Firearm registration as part of our normal licensing process could both strengthen our hunting tradition and at the same time help break the national logjam of inaction.

In Sweden, only responsible people can have guns

Here’s how the Swedish system works: Only responsible people are trusted with firearms. Sweden licenses guns in much the same way we license cars and drivers. You can have up to six guns but can get more with special permission.

To apply for a firearm permit you must first take a year-long hunter training program and pass a written and shooting test. You can also apply for a gun permit if you’ve been a member of an established shooting club for six months.

In addition to undergoing training, Sweden’s gun owners must store their firearms safely. Guns must be locked away in a vault, not stored beneath your car seat or in the nightstand where your kids can find them.

Responsibility in Sweden goes further yet: Convicted of a felony? No guns for you. Beat your wife? No guns. Under a restraining order? No guns. Drive drunk? No guns.

(The gun law does not spell out specific actions that cause a citizen to be “unfit” to have a gun permit. It does say that the police must have a “reasonable cause” to suspend a permit, and these kinds of things might signal that a gun owner is “unfit.”)

Even so, being responsible is not such a tough job. Sweden denies permits to only about 1,000 people a year (out of 600,000 permit holders), and they can appeal their rejection to the courts.

I learned that it was possible to maintain a lively hunting culture along with mandatory gun registration and required safe storage

And despite these restrictions, Sweden has a strong hunting culture. The heavily forested country is about the size of California but with one-fourth the people. Its moose population per acre is the world’s largest, and moose hunting is front-page news. The king himself hunts moose, and small towns shut down for the season opener much like Wisconsin towns do for the state’s deer season.

Sweden has nearly 300,000 hunters, which means it has a readily armed population should it need defense. And make no mistake: Guns are part of Sweden’s culture, history, and national defense — even though it has enjoyed more than 200 years of peace.

Many of my Swedish colleagues served in the military and are proficient with firearms. They can practice at shooting ranges all over Stockholm. When hiking in a city park, it’s common to hear the measured shots of target practice nearby.

And yet gun violence is low in Sweden. The country ranks 10th out of 178 countries in the world for per capita gun ownership but in 2014 had only 21 homicides by firearms. In contrast, the US is first in per capita ownership and had more than 8,000 gun homicides in 2014. Controlling for population, US firearms homicides are 700 percent higher than Sweden’s.

At my Wisconsin hunting camp, there are no gun rights – just gun responsibilities

My favorite place in the world is an old cabin in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, where Heberlein relatives and friends have gathered every year for the past seven decades to hunt ruffed grouse and white-tailed deer. My fondest, proudest, and happiest memories of friendship, accomplishment, and even despair have occurred in the presence of firearms in that camp.

But in my hunting camp, gun rights don’t exist — just gun responsibilities. Wally and Norman know that. Wally was walking down the nearby White City logging road with Dick at his side when his .30-30 lever-action rifle fired unexpectedly. If Dick had been walking ahead of him, Dick would have been the one who didn’t show up at camp that next year instead of Wally, whose carelessness cost him his camp privileges.

Norman, meanwhile, is one of the world’s nicest guys, but he doesn’t hunt with us anymore either. Twice his gun went off accidentally.

I doubt most Americans understand how its hunters focus on gun responsibilities. Novice hunters are taught how to handle guns: Assume every gun is always loaded — even if you’re sure it’s not. Never point a gun at anything you would not shoot. The ground and sky are the exceptions, but not a house, a barn, or the neighbor’s cat. If you find yourself looking into someone’s gun muzzle, you’re always right to call out the hazardous infraction.

In our public rhetoric we may talk about the right to bear arms, but in our hunting life we focus on our safe gun-handling responsibilities to our fellow hunters. We don’t tolerate irresponsible hunters in the field, so why support the alleged rights of gun owners who make mass murders too common in America?

The author (left) at his hunting camp, reading from a log of past hunts. (Courtesy of Tom Heberlein)

How American hunters can claim the moral high ground for gun owners

It’s time to show the world that we hunters are the responsible gun owners in America. We can’t wait for Congress to pass new gun control legislation — it seems bound by money and lobbyists to never act. We hunters should use our own institutions, which we fund with license fees, to maintain safe and responsible gun ownership.

We don’t have to wait for the nation to act. We can work state by state to incorporate hunting firearm registration as part of our normal licensing process. Today when you buy a hunting license, you must meet a number of requirements like being a state resident, being a certain age, and in most states providing evidence of hunter safety training.

For each animal, the type of weapon that is legal is already specified in the rules. It would be a simple step in the licensing process to require hunters to specify the serial number of all firearms they are using for hunting. Registering the weapon would make it legal for hunting.

This registration won’t make hunting any safer — hunting will be just as safe whether the gun is registered or not. But it will signal to the vast majority of Americans who support responsible gun ownership that we hunters are willing to make a visible step as responsible gun owners.

Wildlife commissions set hunting rules in most states, so it’s in their authority to require that any firearms used for hunting in that state be registered with the agency. It’s as simple as listing the make, model, and serial number of the firearms you will use for hunting when you buy your license.

Hunters don’t need expensive, time-consuming background checks — we are already trained. This proposal would apply only to firearms used for hunting. You wouldn’t need to register the AK, AR, handgun, or MSR (modern sporting rifle) you keep in the closet for home defense; our wildlife agencies makes rules only for guns used in the hunt, not all guns. Non-hunting firearms should also be under control, but let’s start first by registering the millions of firearms used for hunting.

We hunters have our own police — conservation wardens — who number 5,000 strong nationally. We even pay their wages through our hunting fees to make sure we obey the rules. When wardens check a hunter in the field, they determine if the firearm is the right caliber as determined by the hunting regulations. For waterfowl, the magazine is checked to make sure it can only shoot three shells rather than the five for which it was designed. The shells the hunters are carrying are checked to make sure they are nontoxic.

It would be a simple matter for the warden to check the serial number on the gun and compare those printed out on the back of the hunter’s license or to query an electronic data base. If you’re caught hunting with an unregistered gun, then you’re hunting illegally and are subject to fines and lost hunting privileges. It is as simple as that.

Of course this idea faces obstacles, including the biggest one of all: hunters’ unwillingness to change. Anything. We love hunting so much that its traditions and practices create strong emotional ties that we defend instinctively and passionately. If you doubt it, just ask any wildlife manager how stubbornly hunters resist even minor changes to rules and quotas.

Many will say self-registration won’t save lives. They’re right … and wrong. Hunter involvement in mass shootings is so unusual that no one is keeping the statistics. Hunters very rarely inflict such evil on innocent lives.

But that’s not the point. Self-registration of our hunting weapons would distinguish us from other gun owners, not in words but in deeds. We would be taking the first step toward universal gun registration by registering our hunting firearms. Non-hunting gun owners who want to prove that they are responsible might want to join the hunting registration system.

Registration could lead gradually to requiring safe storage by locking all hunting guns in gun vaults. That would prevent tragedies in our own homes, which does mean saving lives. Ask the hunter who has lost a child to an accident or horseplay with an unsecured rifle or handgun.

Of course, we can expect to hear this mantra: “If they know who owns guns, they can come and take them away.” But “they” already know. Computerized lists of licensed hunters are in government offices in all 50 states, and many of those lists are public information. One must assume they figured out that licensed hunters have guns.

How many more mass shootings must we watch with helpless impotence while asking, “What I can do?”

Won’t self-registration of guns reduce hunter numbers? I’ve spent much of my career studying hunter population dynamics, and I’m concerned about declines in hunting. But I don’t think the dropout group will be large.

Many hunters claim they’ll quit hunting when license fees go up, and, yes, license numbers often dip the first year, but most return the next. Hunting matters that much to us. And, yes, some might keep their hunting firearms secret and give up hunting instead. Personally, I’m willing to see them go. I want to hunt with men and women who responsibly register their hunting firearms.

Why do this? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? How many more mass shootings must we watch with helpless impotence while asking, “What I can do?” To protect what we love — our hunting life — we must differentiate ourselves from other gun owners.

By choosing to register our guns with our wildlife agencies, we would follow a long history of putting restrictions on ourselves for the greater good: bag limits, season lengths, blaze orange clothing, and so on. We will be recognized as the responsible registered gun owners.

Sweden shows it’s possible to have a serious hunting culture with firearms restrictions. With rights comes responsibility. Let’s show the way. Who will be the courageous, visionary sportsmen and women who establish the first hunter registration system in Vermont, or New York, or in my home state of Wisconsin, and take a step forward to sensible gun use in America?

Thomas Heberlein is professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Madison and was a guest professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Environmental Studies at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He divides his time between Sweden and Wisconsin. He is working on a book called Falling in Love With Sweden: One Mistake at a Time.