To Örebro University

The taxation of companies in Sweden is based on the result presented in each company’s annual financial statement. This system of taxation causes the rise of a mutual bond between taxation and accounting. The bond is primarily noticeable during the accrual of revenues and expenses, so they can be connected to a specific period of time in the Consolidated Income Statement. The revenue needs to refer to the correct fiscal year when it can actually be collected, even though it might be in a different accounting period.

The current Swedish law governing auditing and taxation does not provide clear guidance on the accrual procedure. The main guidance is provided by a sound auditing procedure“god redovisningssed” (defined as generally accepted accounting principle); which in itself, is a concept that lacks a clear definition.

A suggestion to change the law and to apply new rules was made in a Swedish inquest entitled “SamRoB” (Sambandet mellan redovisning och beskattning), of which translated to English means “the relationship between accounting and taxation”. These suggestions were mainly criticized as they could lead to higher administrative costs.

This study is a quantitative research where a survey was used to try to depict the preferences of the Swedish companies with regard to the suggestions made in SamRoB, which was the aim of the study.

The conclusions drawn from this study was that the Swedish companies were not looking towards law changes and would rather not apply the suggestions made in SamRoB.

Keywords: SOU 2008:80, SamRoB, accounting, decoupling, taxation and generally accepted accounting principles.