The Value-Added Tax (VAT) is the Swedish government’s largest individual source of income, but it is common knowledge that cheating on VAT declarations is, well, common practice. To develop a system to examine and flag questionable company tax declarations, the Swedish National Tax Authority selected Smalltalk as its development tool – as it had years earlier when the Authority developed a similar system for examining income tax returns.

The Authority chose Smalltalk because it could recycle and reuse parts of the earlier system in the new VAT checking system and thus reduce costs. In addition, developers’ proven productivity in and preferences for the Smalltalk environment pulled it to the top in the selection process.