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.
Highlights
“We are asked to collect 15% of the arrears and 62% of the current years’ liabilities
Inspired by Bourdieu’s framework of practical sense (Bourdieu 1977, 1998, 1990; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), we suggest that empathy forms part of the individual and organizational enforcement practices of the Tax Administration of Jamaica (TAJ)
We find evidence of tax administrators repositioning themselves from objective enforcers to empathizing officials, seeking to identify with defaulters’ circumstances to secure compliance by using two empathy games: assimilated and cynical
Summary
“We are asked to collect 15% of the arrears and 62% of the current years’ liabilities. We argue that these schemes of action and responses are the “coulds”—the possibilities or games in which tax administrators engage to enact enforcement Such games may not be rule-based because, as Bourdieu Streetlevel tax administrators are able to resort to empathy games based on their perceptions of defaulters’ circumstances and responsiveness to enforcement efforts Moving between their own ideas and the perspectives of defaulters, as well as identifying with defaulters’ points of view, provides tax administrators with opportunities to obtain in depth understandings of defaulters’ mind-sets and motivations, creating space for resourceful and creative practices
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