Knock, Knock: The Taxman’s at Your Door! Practice Sense, Empathy Games, and Dilemmas in Tax Enforcement

Abstract

Tax administrators are empowered by the state to secure compliance with tax obligations. Enforcing compliance on the ground is complex, and street-level administrators often engage in the "art of the possible," leading to dilemmas in the field. This paper examines tax administrators' practices with regard to Jamaican property tax defaulters with outstanding tax liabilities in excess of 3 years. Drawing on interviews with tax administrators and other key agents, we find that tax administrators reposition themselves from objective enforcers to empathizing officials engaging in schemes of action, doing what they can do rather than what they should do. This is a practical-sense approach to securing compliance. We identify two forms of empathy, assimilated and cynical, and conclude that administrators' empathetic identification with defaulters does not necessarily arise solely from concern for social cohesion, or inter-subjective compassion, but also sometimes from self-interest.

“The frog in the pan”: relational transformation of public values in the UK tax authority

“…In line with studies of street-level bureaucracy and tax administration practice (e.g. Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003;Raaphorst and Loyens, 2018;Wynter and Oats, 2019), we find that face-to-face encounters in local tax offices offer discretionary space for responding to citizens' complex characteristics and needs, building relationships and enacting relational values such as trust, care, respect and fairness. We also confirm that "screen-level bureaucrats" (Bovens and Zouridis, 2002) have little discretion, as they are subjectivised to neoliberal values through digitised calculative practices.…”

“…This normative stance is backed up by calls in PA for creating a “relational state” grounded in public values of human dignity, respect, dialogue, trust, care, fairness, responsiveness and empowerment (Bell and Smerdon, 2011; Cooke and Muir, 2012; Denhardt, 2011; Stout and Love, 2018). Such relational (public) values have been found to emerge from, and be cultivated through, face-to-face interactions between public workers and citizens as they navigate the network they are embedded in (Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003; Hand, 2019; Raaphorst and Loyens, 2018; Wynter and Oats, 2019; Vosselman, 2016).…”

“…HMRC is a non-ministerial government department that has administered the United Kingdom's tax system since April 2005, when it was created from the merger of two separate tax authorities: Inland Revenue (IR) and Her Majesty's Customs and Excise (HMCE). Several critical studies have already analysed changing roles and working practices of tax authority managers and workers in the United Kingdom (Tuck, 2010; Currie et al , 2015, 2016) and elsewhere (Boll, 2014; Wynter and Oats, 2018, 2019). For instance, Tuck (2010) conducted a Foucauldian analysis of “ the 4-year period when HMRC was undergoing immense change ” (p. 594), revealing how NPM reforms had changed tax officials' identities by subjectivising them to managerialism, a customer orientation and compartmentalised specialisation.…”

A self-employed taxpayer experimental study on trust, power, and tax compliance in eleven countries

“…Consistent literature on the variables influencing tax compliance is highlighted through various disciplinary lenses ranging from economic, legislative, and psychological to political or sociological (Lamb et al 2004;Martin et al 2009;Oats 2012). While early studies solely focused on economic factors, such as income, tax rate, penalty, and audit probability (Allingham and Sandmo 1972;Srinivasan 1973;Yitzhaki 1974), psychological factors have gained ground in the last two decades (Alm et al 2010;Braithwaite 2008;Kirchler 2007;Torgler 2007;Wynter and Oats 2021).…”

Introduction

“…The first considers taxation a disciplinary technology, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault to document the practices and discourses employed to turn citizens into self-policing, model taxpayers (Hobson 2004;Likhovski 2007). The second makes use of Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory, investigating tax as a social field characterized by competing actors, logics, and schemes of action (Gracia and Oats 2012;Wynter and Oats 2019). And finally, a third approach employs notions of assemblage to show compliance as "the effect of a heterogeneous assembly of actors and practices" including "auditors and taxpayers but also the knowledge, technology, rules and regulation that provide active enforcement of these various people" (Boll 2012: 225; see also Boll 2014aBoll , 2014b.…”