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Amanda Sonnerfeldt. Photo

Amanda Sonnerfeldt

Senior lecturer, Assistant head Accounting and Corporate Finance, Department of Business Administration

Amanda Sonnerfeldt. Photo

The development of a multidimensional meaning of tax: From unfair tax to fair

Author

  • Axel Hilling
  • Niklas Sandell
  • Amanda Sonnerfeldt
  • Anders Wilhelmsson

Summary, in English

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.

Department/s

  • Lund Tax Academy
  • Department of Business Law
  • Accounting and Corporate Finance
  • Department of Economics

Publishing year

2023-02

Language

English

Pages

57-76

Publication/Series

Discourse & Communication

Volume

17

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Business Administration

Keywords

  • Accounting
  • Annual report
  • Discourse analysis
  • Fair tax
  • Financial communication
  • Intertextuality
  • Language
  • Longitudinal studies
  • Recontextualization
  • Sustainability
  • Tax
  • Accounting
  • annual report
  • discourse analysis
  • fair tax
  • financial communication
  • intertextuality
  • language
  • longitudinal studies
  • recontextualization
  • sustainability
  • tax

Status

Published

Research group

  • Lund Tax Academy

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1750-4813