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Historically, companies have communicated taxes as a burden, as the benefits provided by governments are not perceived to be in proportion to their payments. With sustainable development becoming central in many policy areas, new discourses including ‘fair’ or ‘sustainable’ tax have become omnipresent in public talk on taxes. This paper analyzes tax discourses in corporate annual reports within this changing context to examine the use of language in the construction of the meaning of tax. By analyzing tax reporting by a state-owned multinational company over two decades, we observe that the communication of taxes increased in both number and types of discourses. Importantly, this highlights the shift in tax discourses from one dominated by codified accounting discourse reinforcing the monolithic representation of tax as an unfair expense, to one where tax is given a multidimensional meaning within a broader discursive context, where tax is a meaningful corporate responsibility to society.

We propose a simple theoretical model for how a company with both private and state shareholders decides on its optimal tax policy. The model predicts that even in the absence of state shareholding, a company will not always pick a tax policy that minimizes taxes. Conversely, majority state ownership will generally not result in zero tax avoidance. Using panel regressions on the entire population of state-owned as well as publicly listed Swedish companies from 2000–2019, we find that a one standard deviation increase in state ownership increases corporate tax payments by around 14%.

This joint report includes the five legal national reports on the taxation of partnership in the Nordic countries. The general contents of these reports are summarized and thoroughly analyzed in Liselotte Madsen’s General report, published in this issue of the NTaxJ. For additional information, details on legislative measures etc. we find it important, however, to also publish the national reports in full length. We hope you will find it valuable as well. The respective national reports appear in alphabetic order, in regard to the country which regulation is presented. Name of the country reporter and contact information are presented in the beginning of each report.

This section contains three book reviews. First the book Swedish Taxation, Development since 1862 is reviewed. This volume comprises six studies that examine the development of Swedish taxation from 1862 to 2013, and will likely be of great value in future Nordic tax research because of its comprehensiveness. The second review is about a book written in Swedish:Momsfri sjukvård (The VAT exemption for health care). This volume discusses a topical issue and presents convincing recommendations for changes in the Swedish VAT legislation. Finally, the Danish book International Skatteret, i et dansk perspektiv (International Tax Law, in a Danish perspective) is presented as highly recommended literature for students and practitioners in the field of international tax law. This volume discusses and illustrates general matters in international tax law, as well as specific matters relevant for Danish international tax law.