Teaching is important, and I have chosen to teach more often than many other researchers. Most of my teaching is about tax law and accounting law, and I've often taught in relation to both undergraduate and master’s dissertations. Many of my former students have gone on to be tax experts, which is wonderful.
Furthermore, I have written several textbooks about, for example, writing essays in legal studies, and about the connection between accounting and taxation (4th edition coming out in the autumn), and the proactive use of law (2021) as well as justice and morality (2022).
I am also engaged as a supervisor in legal studies and in the accounting of business administration. Through this work, I come into contact with even wider legal areas such as intellectual property law, the politics of taxation, environmental law, rules of liability, insurance law and so on – but I’m also interested in research questions in business administration and research methods. I supervise and have supervised PhD students, both within and outside of Linköping University.
Research focussing on business models in circular economies, automated financial reporting, and much more
Research relevant right now
A researcher often has several different projects on the go at once, so this is necessarily a limited picture. But in recent years I have focused on pioneering business models and techniques within circular economies, and above all the tax law related to these phenomena and innovations. I currently research the automisation of financial information and reporting (accounting and taxation).
Completed research projects
It is hard to categorise my work as belonging to any particularly specific area of research, but I have mostly worked with corporate tax law and external accounting law. Take a closer look at my publications, of which I wish to emphasise a few.
Mål och metoder vid tolkning av skattelag – Med särskild inriktning på användning av förarbeten (English: The aims and methods in interpretation of tax law – With a particular focus on legislative history) (PhD thesis, Uppsala 1997). In this work, I investigated the relationship between aims and methods for interpretations of tax law, including through an investigation of interpretative methods in German tax law. The investigation concluded with a suggestion for a legal interpretation theory/method called “aim-steered legal interpretation”.
Kunskapsutveckling och beskattning – Om den inkomstskatterättsliga behandlingen av aktiebolagens utgifter för kunskapsutveckling (English: Expertise development and taxation – On the treatment of limited companies’ expenditure on expertise development with regards to income tax law) (2005). The theme of this investigation was how companies’ expenditure on expertise development was categorised and treated in accounting and taxation. You could see the emergence of lots of different categories, such as inventories, equipment and research & development. The effects of these different categories on taxation varied a lot. I could conclude that the taxation system is not neutral when it comes to different methods for expertise development.
Enkla bolag i inkomstskatterätten (English: General partnerships in income tax law) (2014) In this work, I investigated, both in broad and critical terms, the central problems in income tax law associated with doing business within the framework of general partnerships (such as a joint venture, consortium etc.)
Tidsfrågor i skatterättstillämpningen – Om de avgörande tidpunkterna i redovisning och beskattning och om betydelsen av händelser därefter (English: Time aspects in the application of taxation law – On the crucial moments in accounting and taxation, and the meaning of the events that follow) (2016). Within the frame of this investigation I looked at two central, but relatively under-investigated questions. Firstly the question of at which point the conditions described in taxation and accounting rules are met, thus triggering the application of the rules; and secondly the question of the significance of the following events in relation to relevant considerations.
Funktionsförsäljning (English: Functional Sales) (2020). In this interdisciplinary project, we investigated the accounting and taxation of the circular business model of functional sales, where what is sold is a result (technology neutral), not material assets or traditional,limited services.
Balanserade termiska nät (English: Balanced Thermal Grids) (2022) is a pioneering technology for distributing excess warmth between properties (instead of getting rid of it through ventilation). A recently completed interdisciplinary project on questions related to balanced thermal grids covered, for example, questions of taxation related to the maintenance of such systems.
