Quiescent Leviathan? Citizenship and National Security Measures in Late Modernity

The systematic study of political trials and national security measures tends to be associated with the old-fashioned genre of ‘state trials’. Although whiggish or critical reductionism has since tended to prevail, recent social historical work on protest movements, ideology, and rights struggles opens up fresh approaches. The current scholarly shift of attention away from the repressive powers of the state to plural sites of power, while representing an advance, also threatens to relegate the area to neglect. The modern renewal of national security measures can in fact be seen as part of a more complex deployment of law and linked to current debates around state formation, governmentality, and citizenship. As the late modern state is eroded from above by globalization, and from below by demands of identity politics and differentiated citizenship, will such repressive measures be revealed as an anachronism or continue as a final resource of the state in crisis?     

降低税收遵从成本 创新纳税服务模式

纳税人需要尽可能低的税收遵从成本,而税务机关希望纳税人最大限度地遵从税法,征纳双方在税收征管的博弈有个理性选择的契合点——降低税收遵从成本。因此,研究纳税人税收遵从成本与纳税服务的相关性,探索降低企业税收遵从成本来推进纳税服务工作,通过改进纳税服务措施来降低纳税人的税收遵从成本,形成二者间的良性循环,对我国企业、税务机关和国家经济健康的发展都具有重要的意义。     

Neutralization and Tax Evasion: How Effective Would a Moral Appeal Be in Improving Compliance to Tax Laws?

The failure of individuals to pay their taxes in full is a serious budgetary problem for the federal government. Existing research (Schwartz and Orleans, 1967; Grasmick and Scott, 1982) suggests that efforts to increase the guilt feelings experienced for tax evasion might improve compliance. However, neutralization theory (Sykes and Matza, 1957) predicts that guilt feelings can be reduced by neutralization strategies which justify guilt-producing behavior, compromising the inhibiting effect of guilt feelings. Our research shows that through the use of neutralization strategies which justify tax evasion the inhibiting effect of guilt feelings is sharply reduced. The implications of this finding for tax compliance programs based on appeals to the moral obligation of paying taxes are discussed.     

Tax Compliance as the Result of a Psychological Tax Contract: The Role of Incentives and Responsive Regulation

A psychological tax contract goes beyond the traditional deterrence model and explains tax morale as a complicated interaction between taxpayers and the government. As a contractual relationship implies duties and rights for each contract party, tax compliance is increased by sticking to the fiscal exchange paradigm between citizens and the state. Citizens are willing to honestly declare income even if they do not receive a full public good equivalent to tax payments as long as the political process is perceived to be fair and legitimate. Moreover, friendly treatment of taxpayers by the tax office in auditing processes increases tax compliance.     

Enhancing Tax Compliance through Coercive and Legitimate Power of Tax Authorities by Concurrently Diminishing or Facilitating Trust in Tax Authorities

Both coercion, such as strict auditing and the use of fines, and legitimate procedures, such as assistance by tax authorities, are often discussed as means of enhancing tax compliance. However, the psychological mechanisms that determine the effectiveness of each strategy are not clear. Although highly relevant, there is rare empirical literature examining the effects of both strategies applied in combination. It is assumed that coercion decreases implicit trust in tax authorities, leading to the perception of a hostile antagonistic tax climate and enforced tax compliance. Conversely, it is suggested that legitimate power increases reason‐based trust in the tax authorities, leading to the perception of a service climate and eventually to voluntary cooperation. The combination of both strategies is assumed to cause greater levels of intended compliance than each strategy alone. We conducted two experimental studies with convenience samples of 261 taxpayers overall. The studies describe tax authorities as having low or high coercive power (e.g., imposing lenient or severe sanctions) and/or low or high legitimate power (e.g., having nontransparent or transparent procedures). Data analyses provide supportive evidence for the assumptions regarding the impact on intended tax compliance. Coercive power did not reduce implicit trust in tax authorities; however, it had an effect on reason‐based trust, interaction climate, and intended tax compliance if applied solely. When wielded in combination with legitimate power, it had no effect.     

Constructing Compliance: Game Playing, Tax Law, and the Regulatory State

This article proposes a rethinking of approaches to compliance, extending perspectives that view regulation as an interactive or reflexive process mediated by sociolinguistic practices. These suggest that the meaning of rules is not fixed ex ante, but may emerge and change through such interactions, which therefore actually help to construct what it means to comply. The analysis supports proposals to base tax law on purposive general principles combined with detailed rules. However, it suggests that this should be the approach adopted for the tax code as a whole, instead of focusing mainly on the merits of a general anti-avoidance principle, as some of the recent debates have done. The article explores the question of interpretation of rules and the problem of avoidance and game playing. It reexamines the issue of the indeterminacy of rules and relocates it within the context of professional and regulatory practices, suggesting that it is these interactions that construct the meaning of rules and hence of compliance. The analysis is applied to income taxation, to sketch out how the international tax system has been constructed through the interaction of contending views of fairness in the allocation of tax jurisdiction, while in the process becoming refined into a formalist and technicist process of game playing. It argues that the central factor in this process has been the inherent contestability of the core concepts of international taxation, the rules on corporate residence and source of income. The article concludes by considering some of the current proposals for improving tax compliance, in particular by reducing complexity, improving clarity, and the use of broad principles.     

Assessing and Tax Accounting Principles in the German Civil and Commercial Code and the Impact on Tax Compliance

The author outlines the development of accounting and assessing principles in Germany. He presents the poor regulations at the beginning and shows the thoroughly improved rulings after the middle of the 19th century as a result of specific problems caused by the revolutionized taxation sytem after priority was shifted from indirect excise duties to direct new income taxation. The author shows the impact of accounting problems and the development of modern accounting principles originated by the political events. He outlines the gradual formation of extraordinary deficiencies of the German legal accounting principles compared with the ideal goal of all accounting. The author demonstrates the difficulties, which brought about a different historical economic development beween German and Anglo-Saxon accounting principles. He shows the obstacles the harmonisation activities are facing and the endeavours to support globalisation.     

The Role of Trust in Nurturing Compliance: A Study of Accused Tax Avoiders

Why an institution's rules and regulations are obeyed or disobeyed is an important question for regulatory agencies. This paper discusses the findings of an empirical study that shows that the use of threat and legal coercion as a regulatory tool--in addition to being more expensive to implement--can sometimes be ineffective in gaining compliance. Using survey data collected from 2,292 taxpayers accused of tax avoidance, it will be demonstrated that variables such as trust need to be considered when managing noncompliance. If regulators are seen to be acting fairly, people will trust the motives of that authority, and will defer to their decisions voluntarily. This paper therefore argues that to shape desired behavior, regulators will need to move beyond motivation linked purely to deterrence. Strategies directed at reducing levels of distrust between the two sides may prove particularly effective in gaining voluntary compliance with an organization's rules and regulations.     

A Letter from the Tax Office: Compliance Effects of Informational and Interpersonal Justice

It has been argued that authorities attract greater compliance when they treat people according to principles of interactional and procedural justice. Set in the context of taxation, the present research investigates the effects on behavioral compliance of reminder letters adopting principles of informational and interpersonal fairness compared with a standard reminder notice. Study 1 with 199 students confirmed that both fairness letters were regarded as fairer than the standard letter. In Study 2, a field experiment, 2052 Australian taxpayers who had an obligation to file a tax declaration but failed to file on time were randomly sent one of the three reminder letters. The two fairness letters yielded a significantly greater compliance rate than the control letter.

Encouraging Tax Compliance With Positive Incentives: A Conceptual Framework and Research Directions*

Drawing on learning and social psychological research, we identify the processes by which positive incentives induce compliance with regulatory laws, using tax as a specific example. We evaluate the likely effects of various positive incentives on four different dimensions of compliance decisions: instrumental consequences, normative considerations, internalized motivation, and allegiance to authority. Linking incentives specifically to compliant behavior invokes a cost/benefit analysis, lowers intrinsic motivation and allegiance to authority, and requires authorities to monitor citizens and to distinguish between compliant and noncompliant behaviors. The alternative is to present the incentives as an attempt by the enforcement authorities to cooperate with the citizens. This method is less likely to invoke cost/benefit calculations; requires less intervention by authorities; and increases intrinsic motivation, consideration of normative issues, and allegiance to authorities. Prior research suggests that respectful treatment and praise may be more effective incentives for inducing long-lasting compliance than are materialistic incentives because people have a strong tendency to reciprocate actions they receive from authorities. Our analysis leads to proposals for program implementation and evaluation and raises some theoretical questions that need additional research.     

Liberty without Equality: The Property-Rights Connection in a "Negative Citizenship" Regime

Why, in comparison with other liberal capitalist democracies, is the social welfare state so poorly anchored in American law and public discourse? Surely American political and social history have contributed much to the weakness of our “social state.” But law, too, has played a significant material, as well as ideological, role and has provided the terrain for much of our social development. This essay explores the particular contribution of the property-liberty nexus to the stunted development of positive liberty and social citizenship in the United States. It traces this connection from the natural rights and bourgeois Founders through several key conjunctures in American history, including Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the civil rights periods and compares some of the results with developments in Germany and the aspirations of American progressives. The essay contends that left and right alike have operated within a highly resilient and constricting framework that has made progress in the area of social citizenship both awkward and fragile. Although some possibilities for forward movement have always existed and still remain, the prospects for positive-liberty social-state law are not abundant: The master's house is not about to be taken down with his own tools.     

Weak Enforcement,Strong Deterrence: Dialogues with Chinese Lawyers About Tax Evasion and Compliance

This article analyzes why Chinese lawyers report a high level of perceived deterrence in relation to tax evasion even though enforcement is weak. It finds that deterrence here originates from multiple sources, most directly through clients and more distantly through the firm and the state. Lawyers have highly contextual notions of detection probability and a vague understanding of sanction severity unfitting of the high deterrence found here. In the cases studied, deterrence arises out of a general fear lawyers have of state authorities and clients, as well as through personal morals and social norms in their firms. This shows a broader and deeper approach to deterrence, beyond certainty and severity of punishment for the violation studied, one in which the general perceived risk of such violation is central, whatever its source.     

A Typology of Tax Compliance in Developing Economies: Empirical Evidence from China's Shoe Industry

Drawing on fieldwork investigations of shoe manufacturers in southeastern China, this article provides empirical evidence for understanding these businesses’ taxpaying practices. We find that since business taxpayers largely regard tax law as illegitimate, instrumental considerations dominate these taxpayers’ decisions to pay or not pay taxes. We then incorporate “structural opportunities for evasion” and “perceived costs of evasion” to develop a two‐by‐two matrix to understand the following types of behavior: aggressive evasion, obliged compliance, strategic compliance, and reciprocal compliance. We argue that this matrix explains why value added tax fraud is widespread in China while voluntary compliance is rare. It also helps to illuminate compliance more generally in developing economies.     

The "Compliance" Trap: The Moral Message in Responsive Regulatory Enforcement

Simple deterrence will often fail to produce compliance commitment because it does not directly address business perceptions of the morality of regulated behavior. Responsive regulation, by contrast, seeks to build moral commitment to compliance with the law. This article shows that a regulator can overcome the deterrence trap to improve compliance commitment with the skillful use of responsive regulatory techniques that "leverage" the deterrence impact of its enforcement strategies with moral judgments. But this leads it into the "compliance trap." The compliance trap occurs where there is a lack of political support for the moral seriousness of the law it must enforce, such as is the case with cartel enforcement in Australia. In these circumstances, business offenders are likely to interpret the moral leveraging of responsive regulation as unfair or stigmatizing, and business perceptions of regulator unfairness are likely to have a negative influence on long-term compliance with the law. Moreover, big businesses that perceive regulatory enforcement as illegitimate are also likely to actively lobby for the political emasculation of the regulator. In these circumstances, most regulators are likely to avoid conflict by taking the easy option of enforcing the law "softly," and therefore ineffectively.     

Did the Tax Reform Act of 1986 Improve Compliance? Three Studies of Pre- and Post-TRA Compliance Attitudes*

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 rewrote the federal income tax code, bringing it closer to policy professionals' vision of what constitutes an equitable and efficient income tax. Research on tax compliance suggests the law might have affected taxpayer compliance in three ways: by reducing opportunities to overstate deductions, by changing perceptions of fairness, and by altering tax liabilities. Changes in taxpayer perceptions, attitudes, and noncompliance intentions were examined in three bodies of survey data, each containing pre-and post-reform data from independent samples of the same population. The results show an improved normative climate for taxpayer compliance and point to both the feasibility and the importance of examining the effects of substantive tax policies on taxpayer perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions.     

说不尽的"现代性"——评《中国法学向何处去》

<中国法学向何处去>一文体现出邓正来对中国法学(1978年至2004年)进行反思和批判的理论自觉与智性努力.苏力实际上和邓正来一样对邓正来所界定的"现代化范式"进行了质疑.在福柯所诠释的"现代"意义上,邓正来是一个现代主义者;在哈贝马斯理解的"现代性"意义上,邓正来依然是一个现代主义者."现代性"本是一个丰富的概念,关键之处在于如何定义"现代性".     

税收遵从协议的治理机制——行政合同的实证解析

税收遵从协议属于行政合同,是我国契约治理的实践和行政管理模式的变革。税收遵从协议存在积极作用和消极作用。积极作用表现为协议通过降低行政成本来推动双方主体主动履行协议,由此建立契约治理的有效机制,这是传统行政合同理论没有触及的领域。消极作用表现为协议把私法属性融入公法治理模式时产生的局限性,但这可从制度设计上加以防范。     

Citizenship in schools: the gap between theory and practice

Upon leaving school, young people are expected to play an active part as citizens in a democratic society. Are schools providing them with the tools to do this? Citizenship is taught in schools, but to what extent is it practised? Many safety issues concerning student behaviour and student conflict confront school authorities. In what ways are students learning to take responsibility for the safety of their school environments? Generally, schools in New Zealand and in comparative jurisdictions continue to operate on a traditional authoritarian hierarchical basis. Within these structures students could rightly feel that schooling is something which is ‘done to them’ rather than their being engaged as active participants. School authorities have a moral and legal responsibility to maintain a learning environment which is physically and emotionally safe and free from hostility. Traditionally reactive measures such as searching, drug testing and exclusion are used by schools with the aim of fulfilment of that duty. Research indicates that these measures have met with limited success in terms of school safety, and that in any event they may expose school authorities to challenge from students on the basis that their rights have been violated.