The Sociality of Tax: A Multiperspective Study of Fiscal Relations (SocTax)

税收是公民如何体验和想象他们与国家、其他公民的关系，以及如何感知自己在社会和国家中的角色、身份和责任的核心要素。虽然更广泛的社会科学已经深入研究了财政政策和现实，这项研究突出了税收的社会性，不同的税收制度产生的关系类型。该项目以人类学的方式调查财政制度。它将探讨纳税和不纳税产生的各种社会关系，而不是专注于财政合规或税收的宏观和微观经济学。它这样做比较和跨文化：跨越多个外地站点，包括邻里，工作场所，社区团体，政治利益集团，税务局和三个财政系统-玻利维亚，瑞典和英国。该项目将研究税收制度，因为它们是在不同的文化和历史背景下实践，而不是分析它们作为抽象的经济模型。其目的不是要解释任何一个国家的财政关系的整体，而是要确保不同的视角被用来产生一个广泛的理论问题。这种以行为者为中心的视角关注社会性，扩展了财政奖学金的关注点，旨在重新塑造学术界和大众对税收的理解，税收通常被认为是基于“良好”交换的创始哲学，无论是代表性，安全性，权利或服务的税收，财政制度通常被认为是没有灵魂和功利主义的。本研究旨在超越这种狭隘的税收观念，以掌握财政制度所包含和产生的真实的和想象的社会关系、逻辑、道德话语和欲望。除了塑造国民经济，税收还将人们和社区按特定角色分类，例如公民和非公民，贡献者和“财富创造者”，或依赖者和“乞丐”。“同样，货币的流动也被命名和理解，与不同的道德和社会因素联系在一起，以及关于信贷和债务的故事-谁欠谁。本研究将跟踪财政系统中的行为者和资金流动如何获得他们的性格和道德包袱，并调查这如何产生特定的社会关系。本研究以长期的民族志田野调查为主要方法。参与者观察将在所有三个案例国家进行;这将涉及与研究参与者一起生活，目的是从他们的角度了解他们存在的财政制度。本文的研究主要围绕以下四个问题展开：第一，历史文化背景如何影响财政关系？RQ 2）人们如何与不同的税收和不同的纳税人产生不同的关系，贡献、分享和创造财富的道德和逻辑是什么？人们如何将税收与其他金融交易联系起来，特别是那些也生产公共产品的交易？RQ 4）税收管理（包括数字征收）的社会影响是什么？该研究旨在建立税收人类学作为一个新的研究领域，并通过其创新的重点税收的社会性贡献更广泛的财政奖学金。在加深我们对财政制度影响的理解方面，该研究为围绕税收，再分配，不平等，社会排斥和金融福利的公共和政策辩论做出了原创性贡献。

Tax is a core element of how citizens experience and imagine their relationships with the state, other citizens, and indeed perceive their own roles, identities and responsibilities within society and nation. While the broader social sciences have thoroughly researched fiscal policies and realities, this research foregrounds the sociality of tax-the types of relationships that different tax regimes produce. The project investigates fiscal regimes in an anthropological fashion. It will explore the various social relations that paying and not paying tax produce rather than focusing on fiscal compliance or the macro and microeconomics of tax. It does so comparatively and cross-culturally: spanning multiple fieldsites, including neighbourhoods, workplaces, community groups, political interest groups, and tax offices, and three fiscal systems-Bolivia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The project will study tax systems as they are practiced within different cultural and historical contexts, as opposed to analyzing them as abstract economic models. The aim is not to account for any one nation's fiscal relations in totality, but instead to ensure that diverse perspectives are used to produce a broad set of theoretical concerns. This actor-centered perspective focused on sociality expands the concerns of fiscal scholarship and aims to re-shape academic and popular understandings of what taxes are and doTax is generally thought to be premised on a founding philosophy of a 'good' exchange-be it taxes for representation, security, rights or services, and fiscal systems are often perceived of as soul less and utilitarian. This research aims to go beyond this narrow perception of tax in order to grasp the real and imagined social relationships, logics, moral discourses, and desires that fiscal regimes contain and generate. In addition to shaping national economies, taxes caste people and communities in particular roles, such as citizen and non-citizen, contributor and 'wealth creator', or dependant and 'scrounger.' In the same way flows of money are named and variably understood, with different moral and social elements attached to them, as well as stories about credit and debt-who owes whom. This study will track how actors and money flows in fiscal systems gain their character and moral baggage and investigate how this produces particular social relations. This research employs long-term ethnographic fieldwork as its main methodological approach. Participant observation will be conducted in all three case countries; this will involve living alongside research participants with the aim of understanding the fiscal systems they exist within from their perspective. The following four questions guide the research: RQ1) How do historical and cultural context impact on fiscal relations? RQ2) How do people relate varyingly to different taxes and different taxpayers, and what are the ethics and logics of contribution, sharing and wealth creation? RQ3) How do people relate tax to other financial exchanges, especially those that also produce public goods? RQ4) What are the social effects of tax administration, including digital collection? The research aims to establish anthropology of tax as a new field of study and contribute to wider fiscal scholarship through its innovative focus on the sociality of tax. In deepening our understandings of the effects of fiscal systems, the research makes original contributions to public and policy debates around taxes, redistribution, inequality, social exclusion and financial welfare.