International Cultural History of Tax Morale

近年来，像乌利·霍内什、巴拿马文件或唐纳德·特朗普对纳税义务的态度（这让我很聪明）这样的丑闻经常引起公众的愤怒。由此产生的辩论集中在某些公民群体的税收士气的概念。这一概念的语义开放性和灵活性使其在各种辩论和媒体中得到使用。它可以很容易地与不同的意识形态元素结合起来，创造出理想的公民和社会生活类型。税收士气的语义不仅在不同的文化空间之间存在差异，而且随着时间的推移而变化，这是社会科学和经济学对税收士气研究很少考虑的因素。本项目使用历史资料中的税收士气一词作为历史研究的一个概念：它追求的问题是税收士气的语义在不同类型的福利国家中如何变化，以及这个概念如何被不同的行为者使用。此外，它重建的语义之间的变化约1940年和80年代末的跨国比较，旨在检测中断和连续性，从而使更深入的理解的概念。公民维斯纳税义务的规范态度，对于国家通过再分配平衡收入和财富差异以及限制社会不平等的能力至关重要。由此可见，税收道德的分析与社会经济资源的社会公平分配密切相关。这是该项目的一个主要假设。因此，对税收士气的历史分析有望回答关于规范和价值对税收和福利国家长期正常运作的意义的高度现实的问题。该项目采取了典型的方法来研究概念的税收士气在德国，美国和西班牙。

Scandals like the one concerning Uli Hoeneß, the Panama Papers or Donald Trump s attitude towards his duty to pay taxes (That makes me smart) has regularly provoked public indignation in recent years. The resulting debates center on the concept of the tax morale of certain groups of citizens. The semantic openness and flexibility of the concept makes it of use in various debates and in the media. It can easily be combined with different ideological elements, which create ideal types of the citizen and of social life. The semantics of tax morale not only differ between different cultural spaces, but also change over time, a factor rarely considered by social science and economic research on tax morale. This project uses the term tax morale, present in historical sources, as a concept of historical research: it pursues the question of how the semantics of tax morale vary in different types of welfare states and how the concept has been used by different actors. In addition, it reconstructs changes in the semantics between about 1940 and the end of the 1980s in a transnational comparison, aiming to detect breaks and continuities and thus allow a deeper understanding of the concept. The normative attitude of citizens vis-à-vis their tax duty is central for the ability of the state to balance differences in income and wealth through redistribution and to limit social inequality. It follows that the analysis of tax morale is closely connected with the social fair distribution of economic resources in society. This is one main hypothesis of the project. The historical analysis of tax morale therefore promises answers to highly current questions about the meaning of norms and values for the regular functioning of the tax and welfare state in the long run. The project takes a paradigmatic approach to research concepts of tax morale in Germany, the USA and Spain.