Swedish Vid: Pay Your Taxes or No One Will Cut the Grass and Kids Will Ride Spider Bikes; UPDATE: Other Swedish Pro-Tax PSAs Filmed in Estonia for Tax Reasons!
Reason Contributing Editor Michael C. Moynihan (now at The Daily Beast) sent me this Swedish PSA about what a world in which no taxes were paid. It is, apparently, a world in which water turns brown, roads go unpaved, and soccer fields (in Europese: football pitches) go unpaved. On the other hand, kids still ride spider bikes. So there's that.
The choice is yours, civilization.
Watching this clip reminded me that in just about every film by the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman there's a glorious anti-tax rant (my favorite comes a propos of nothing in Scenes from a Marriage, but I'm pretty sure even Death is bitching about taxes under this breath in Seventh Seal). Bergman even left Sweden for a time after a run-in with authorities on the matter.
UPDATE: Reader Drew Hjelm points to an article in the Swedish paper Expressen noting that other pro-tax commercials were filmed in Estonia…because it was cheaper to make them there.
From the Google's translation:
Ahead of this year's Tax return period produced a series of commercials to get more people to declare by sms or email. The films, sent in TV4, the "Parliament" comedian Johan Wahlstrom in the lead role.
When the [Swedish] IRS examined how much these movies would cost to do in Sweden—with the world's highest taxes—the conclusion was that it would be too expensive.
Watch Reason TV's "Taxes: The Price We Pay for Civilization":