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和其他公民的关系的核心要素，实际上是他们在社会和国家中感知自己的角色、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，但这项研究突出了税收的社会性--不同税收制度产生的各种关系。该项目以人类学的方式研究财政制度。它将探索纳税和不纳税所产生的各种社会关系，而不是关注财政合规或税收的宏观和微观经济学。它是比较和跨文化的：它跨越多个实地地点，包括社区、工作场所、社区团体、政治利益团体和税务局，以及三个财政系统--玻利维亚、瑞典和联合王国。该项目将研究税收制度在不同文化和历史背景下的实践，而不是将其作为抽象的经济模型进行分析。其目的不是从整体上解释任何一个国家的财政关系，而是确保使用不同的视角来产生一系列广泛的理论关切。这种以行为者为中心的视角聚焦于社会性，扩展了财政学术的关注点，旨在重塑学术界和大众对税收是什么的理解，DOTAX通常被认为是以一种“良好”交换的创始哲学为前提的--无论是用税收换取代表权、安全权、权利还是服务，而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对税收的狭隘认识，以掌握财政制度所包含和产生的真实和想象的社会关系、逻辑、道德话语和愿望。除了塑造国家经济，还对种姓人和社区的特定角色征税，如公民和非公民、贡献者和“财富创造者”，或受抚养者和“乞讨者”。以同样的方式，人们对资金流进行了命名和不同的理解，赋予它们不同的道德和社会元素，以及关于信贷和债务的故事-谁欠谁。这项研究将跟踪财政系统中的参与者和资金流动如何获得他们的品格和道德包袱，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研究方法。将在所有三个案例国家进行参与者观察；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所在的财政制度。以下四个问题指导了本研究：RQ1)历史文化背景对财政关系有何影响？RQ2)人们如何与不同的税收和不同的纳税人建立不同的关系，贡献、分享和创造财富的伦理和逻辑是什么？RQ3)人们如何将税收与其他金融交易所，特别是那些也生产公共产品的金融交易所联系起来？RQ4)包括数字征收在内的税务管理的社会影响是什么？该研究旨在将税收人类学确立为一个新的研究领域，并通过其对税收社会性的创新性关注，为更广泛的财政学术做出贡献。在加深我们对财政制度影响的理解方面，这项研究为围绕税收、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的贡献。

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.