Customers? The Reconstruction of the ‘Taxpayer’ in Inland Revenue Discourse and Practice

Abstract

References to customers‟ have become commonplace in the policy discourses within UK government and other public sector bodies. It is a working assumption of UK public sector management that the concept of the customer‟ can be applied to any public sector service agency or department; this paper analyses how the UK government‟s revenue department, formerly titled the Inland Revenue (IR), re-characterised firstly taxpayers and latterly tax claimants as customers, rather than users, of IR services. This paper identifies some problems, dilemmas and ambiguities associated with this reconceptualisation in the context of an organisation that is predominantly a regulating department. Far from being merely a reclassification of the taxpayer as customer, the emerging discourse and associated practices of the IR were in part embedded in organisational change including the merger with HM Customs and Excise to form the present-day HMRC. Thus, this case analysis illustrates the limits of consumerism as a strategic tool of a government revenue department and raises wider questions for public management.