Introduction
“We are asked to collect 15% of the arrears and 62% of the current years’ liabilities. What do you do,” asked a senior tax administrator, “when defaulters sometimes don’t turn up to court, when a defaulter is ill but owes more than a $1 m in taxes or when a defaulter hides from the tax authority during the regular work hours but can be found on a Sunday?”
Tax administrators are empowered by the state to carry out their main task of securing tax compliance (Bird and Zolt
2014; Björklund Larsen
2013,
2015,
2017; Boll
2011,
2014; Wynter and Oats
2018), and are expected to raise tax revenues to enable the state to carry out its obligations (Bräutigam
2008; Martin et al.
2009). Defaulting taxpayers must be found and made to pay. “Tax administrators … are specifically entrusted with powers of tax enforcement through tax regulations to ensure that citizens are accountable to the state through compliance and payment of … their tax” (Wynter and Oats
2018). Nevertheless, enforcement on the ground is complex, and street-level tax administrators engage in the “art of the possible” (Tanzi and Zee
2001, p. 2), that is, using unconventional methods when necessary.
In developing countries, tax administrations’ enforcement activities are often undermined by weak institutions, challenging socioeconomic environments (Alm and Martinez-Vazquez
2007; Mansfield
1988; McKerchar and Evans
2009; Tennant and Tennant
2007; Vehorn
2011), overburdened court systems (Cornia and Walters
2010), and resource constraints. In addition, tax legislation may be insufficient (Gill
2000), tax rolls may be outdated (McCluskey and Franzsen
2005), prohibitive cultural practices may sometimes be embedded in the tax administration’s practices (Nerré
2008; Wynter and Oats
2018), and tax morale, that is, willingness to pay tax, is often low (Bahl and Wallace
2007). Despite these challenges, the state still expects tax administrators to meet their revenue collection targets (Bird and Zolt
2014; Browde
2017). Regulation scholars note that to meet their objectives, street-level bureaucrats adopt various enforcement styles, ranging on a continuum from legalistic, where they stick strictly to the rules, to accommodative, where they are sympathetic to the regulatee’s context (see, for example, Hutter
1989; May and Winter
2000; May and Wood
2003; McAllister
2010; Nordin et al.
2017). Tax administrators with an enforcement role are a particular category of regulator whose work is complicated by the need not only to secure compliance with regulatory requirements, but also to extract funds from the regulatee. They similarly have differing enforcement styles.
Recent years have seen the promotion of softer approaches to safeguarding compliance that involve developing relationships with taxpayers. For example, Alm and Torgler (
2011, p. 635) call for a “kinder and gentler tax administration to enforce compliance,” and Alasfour (
2017) advocates the development of a trust-based culture to achieve this (see also Murphy
2005,
2008). Tax authorities are known to use friendly persuasion (Chung and Trivedi
2003) or to treat taxpayers as customers, requiring personalized, relational interactions (see Tuck
2010). Previous studies (see, for example, Bernstein and Lü
2008; Cullis and Lewis
1997) have shown that where softer approaches are used, compliance tends to increase. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) emphasizes the need for tax administrators to engage in “amicable” relational practices in their bids to enforce compliance on tax defaulters (Silvani and Baer
1997).
Despite this support, little research has been carried out on how tax administrators actually engage in amicable practices to enforce tax payment. In this paper, we explore the use of amicable practices in Jamaican property tax collection, focusing on the use of empathy in dealing with defaulters. We draw on interviews with tax administrators and other key agents in the property tax field to provide insights into tax administrators’ relational approaches, interactions, and enforcement practices. In theory, property tax is difficult to evade, but in practice it presents enforcement challenges because of its complex administration (Bahl
2009; Bahl and Bird
2008; De Cesare
2004; Martinez-Vazquez and Sepulveda
2011, p. 2; Wynter
2014). We introduce a new way of thinking about regulatory enforcement and add to the literature on regulatory practices in the tax field (Braithwaite
2003,
2006,
2009; Gracia and Oats
2012), and specifically tax administrators’ practices (Björklund Larsen
2013,
2015,
2017; Boll
2011,
2014; Pentland and Carlile
1996; Tuck
2010; Wynter and Oats
2018).
We find that a country’s tax administration practices develop not only through formal legislation, but also from tax administrators’ practices (Bird
2015). As Boll (
2011) notes, street-level tax administrators can be viewed as policy makers in how they do their work, so it is important to understand how and why they work in particular ways. 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. A practical-sense framework enables a better understanding of interactions in practice, and of tax administrators’ schemes of actions—doing what they can do, rather than what they should do to enforce compliance.
The paper proceeds as follows: The next section outlines the theoretical framing of the study, including a brief discussion of the notions of practical sense and empathy. The study is then contextualized, and the research methods explained, outlining how the data were collected and analyzed. Following this, the results are presented and discussed, and conclusions drawn.
Practical Sense and Empathy Games in Tax Practices
In the social world, agents’ dispositions interact with field conditions, giving agents a “feel for the game” (Bourdieu
1990, pp. 65–66). This
feel for the game is more than just understanding the
rules of the game. It concerns awareness and appreciation of the game, its complexities, and its “ins” and “outs,” and is a way of making sense of agents’ actions: “feel for the game is what gives the game a subjective sense—a raison d’etre, but also a direction, an orientation impending outcome for those who take part and therefore acknowledge what is at stake” (Bourdieu
1990, p. 66). This is a practical-sense approach. Practical sense, then, is an acquired system of preferences, and principles of vision (what we see) and division (how we classify things), as well as a system of durable cognitive structures and schemes of action that orient perceptions of and appropriate responses to situations (Bourdieu
1998, p. 25). In this paper, 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 (
1990, p. 103) argues, “practical sense does not burden itself with rules or principles, practical sense goes beyond rules of the field, and beyond past practices, to invent new practices.” In some fields, some agents (such as economists in the field of economics) are credited with an ability to assess objective choices rationally, and to self-regulate mechanisms in the field, with absolute power to determine preferences (Bourdieu
1990, p. 81) or preferred courses of action. However, within social practices such as taxation, accounting, and politics, agents are more inclined to do whatever is necessary, or resort to games to achieve their desired ends (Bourdieu
1990). Such game playing is given various labels, such as tact, skill, dexterity or delicacy, but according to Bourdieu (
1990), all comprise practical sense.
In this study, we observed tax administrators engaging in a form of practical sense—empathy—to enforce compliance. Despite a plethora of studies of empathy, there is no coherent definition. Head (
2016) describes the concept as messy, personal, complex, and difficult to define (see Head
2016, pp. 95-96), and a core capacity of humans. Others describe it as a basic capacity or a skill. Whether or not empathy is a moral virtue is subject to debate (see Battaly
2011; Bubandt and Willerslev
2015). Lohmann (
2011, pp. 113–114) argues that it can be fostered as a skill, and notes that it can be neglected or developed in different ways and in different circumstances, and is therefore situational (Hollan and Troop
2011, p. 206). We take the view that empathy can be developed as a skill (Lobb
2017), and is not necessarily tied to the moral makeup of an individual (Prinz
2011), but is context-dependent. We suggest that different types of empathy may be manifested, depending on the situation faced by agents, creating space for agents to switch between different types of empathy.
Empathy entails a perspective on another person’s thoughts and feelings, as if agents were experiencing and understanding the world from the other person’s vantage point (Hollan and Troop
2011, p. 3, citing Halpern
2001), walking “in the shoes of the other” (Head
2016, p. 102) while maintaining their own identity (Rufkin
2009). It also gives agents the capacity to both establish and maintain social bonds and to understand and negotiate social relationships (Gruen
2014, p. 93; Komorosky and O’Neal
2015). The consequences of empathy are concern for others (Coke et al.
1978; Hoffman
2001; Hollan
2008), “compassionate behaviour towards others, moral agency and ethical behaviour based on mercy and justice” (Hollan
2012, citing Harris
2007, p. 169). However, empathy may not always be compassionate, moral or ethical, as “empathic identifications with others do not [necessarily] have as their goal mutual understanding, altruism, consolation, inter-subjective compassions, care or social cohesion” (Bubandt and Willerslev
2015, p. 6; Halpern
2001; Shapiro
2014, pp. 279–280).
We identify two particular forms of empathy, assimilated and cynical, each tied to the type of defaulter encountered by the administrator. Assimilated empathy means understanding the other’s mind-set, driving emotions or outlook, but without necessarily sharing or approving of the other’s thoughts, feelings, and perceptions; it entails assimilating diverse information about the other (Coplan
2011; Galinsky et al.
2008; Halpern
2001,
2014; Vann
2017; Waldman
2014) in a genuine attempt to walk in their shoes. Cynical empathy, on the other hand, is the strategic use of an
impression of empathy in order to achieve a specific objective; it lacks emotional engagement and meaningful understanding of the other. Here, there is a sort of detachment, where concern for the other is switched off, and empathy may become merely an intellectual exercise, remaining squarely in the position of “getting, acquiring, a tool to obtain an objective even though a good one is met” (Shapiro
2014, p. 279). Not all tax administrators will display either assimilated or cynical empathy, but where they do, it may be in one or other form, or a mixture of the two.
We find that where defaulters are more responsive, assimilated empathy is used: when defaulters appear to be more amenable to enforcement, tax administrators are more likely to show genuine concern for them (Coplan
2011; Galinsky et al.
2008; Halpern
2001,
2014; Vann
2017; Waldman
2014). Where defaulters are more resistant to enforcement, cynical empathy is more likely to come into play.
We make the case that identifying with defaulters lies at the heart of tax administrators’ empathic imagination. Street-level 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.
Property Tax Administration
The Jamaican property tax is a local tax, payable annually by owners, occupiers, mortgagors, or anyone in actual possession of the property when payment becomes due. Property tax revenues are important for the survival of Jamaican local authorities’ infrastructural development and provision of local community services, such as garbage collection, street lighting, and community beautification (see Government of Jamaica
1996–National Land Policy; Local Authorities of Jamaica
2016). High evasion rates threaten, and occasionally impair, the effectiveness of local authorities’ operations. Property tax administration is hampered by an overstretched court system, inadequacy of the legislation, lack of political support for some enforcement strategies and outdated tax rolls (Cornia and Walters
2010), informal land tenure practices (Beale and Wyatt
2017; Clarke
1999; Wynter and Oats
2018), adverse socioeconomic conditions, a large informal economy, and resource constraints (Cornia and Walters
2010; Wedderburn et al.
2012), as well as taxpayers’ unwillingness to pay tax (Bahl and Wallace
2007), i.e., low tax morale. High levels of tax evasion result in significant arrears, reduction of which is a target for the tax administration and a performance criterion for regional managers.
In exploring tax administrators’ empathy games, the empirical focus of this study was on the reminder system, a property tax enforcement strategy implemented in Jamaica in 2006 to tackle large-scale evasion. We examined how tax administrators use their experiential and procedural knowledge to manage defaulters’ behavior, through delivery of assessment notices, and visits to defaulters’ properties. We noted how defaulters’ liabilities are enforced, and observed administrators’ interactions with defaulters and identification with defaulters’ perspectives and feelings. As a result, we are able to provide deeper insights into tax administrators’ practical-sense approach, as reflected in their empathy games.
The fundamental concept of the reminder system is to locate, visit and hand-deliver notices to defaulters, establish relationships with them, and bring them under the gaze of the TAJ, with the ultimate goal that they pay their outstanding liabilities and continue to do so in future. Receipt of an assessment notice is a precondition for enforcement. Locating the defaulter initiates a personal interaction, providing tax administrators with an opportunity to identify with the defaulter’s circumstances (Halpern
2014), and both step into and step back from the defaulter’s perspective. Depending on the empathy game played, some defaulters may become more visible and more compliant with TAJ, while others remain outside its gaze and non-compliant.
In their practices and interactions with taxpayers, tax administrators are guided by the Citizen’s Charter introduced in 2011. Its introduction came within the broader ambit of the public-sector modernization program that commenced in 1994 (see Government of Jamaica
2012—Report, Offices of the Services Commissions), but more specifically in response to the IMF’s tax reform conditions in its 2011 standby agreement. Under the Charter, services are built around IMPACT: integrity, mutual respect, professionalism, accountability, customer-centric strategies, and team work. Its importance is underscored in TAJ’s National Compliance Plan (2017/2018), articulating its focused commitment to its clientele, including expected service standards, taxpayers’ rights and obligations, and appropriate channels for expressing grievances or complaints. Notably absent from the Charter is taxpayers’ right to privacy. However, this issue is addressed by the Jamaican Constitution, with the courts stipulating when taxpayers may be visited for enforcement purposes. Despite the absence of this provision, Financial Secretary, Dr Wesley Hughes, noted in the Charter that it is the “public’s score card for rating TAJ’s performance against the targets set” (see TAJ
2012), although there seems to be no information on how this rating can be achieved. Other details of the legislative requirements of the property tax are given in the appendix.
Enforcement Processes
Collecting outstanding liabilities relies on knowledge of and access to defaulters (Dillinger
1992). One senior administrator (STA31) advocated a perpetual access system to defaulters: “We want a system where we can go at night, any time of the night, any time of the day, on a Saturday, Sunday, 24/7.”
1 The Supreme Court of Jamaica grants defaulters a limited right to privacy, preventing enforcement by summonses on Sundays and public holidays. However, TAJ engages municipal officers to serve reminder notices on Sundays, especially near “to crunch time, end of financial year, to get everything we can” (STA31).
Since some defaulters are known to hide from TAJ, a major part of an administrator’s job involves searching for them (Cabinet minister PP14). According to a compliance officer, “I work on the road, I look for delinquent taxpayers, the ones that are hiding, the ones that are not paying” (TCO01). On the other hand, some defaulters who are in full view of TAJ are not enforced against. In this regard, one administrator said:
I will be listening to the radio and hear some people talking about what government need to do. I am sitting there, and I know that these people do not pay [property] tax. But what can I do? I have to keep quiet (STA31).
For those whom TAJ perceives it can enforce against, administrators decide where and for whom to search by reviewing the arrears register to establish the extent and conditions of the debt, supported by information on exact locations from previously caught defaulters. Compliance officers “go door to door, community by community” (PP12, STA31), “staying in a community until some money is collected” (STA32). It was revealed that gated communities have particularly high delinquency rates and access challenges. While some allow access to administrators on presentation of their identification, at others, security officers refuse entry for fear of losing their jobs.
Once defaulters are located, “it was very refreshing to have a one on one with them, as they are the same ones who will assist in locating other taxpayers” (STA31). However, one tax compliance officer (TCO01) painted another picture, reporting that some are “rude, annoying and tedious.” Regardless of their reactions, defaulters are served with their reminder notices, giving details of their current year’s liability, their outstanding liabilities listed year by year, and two options: either to settle their outstanding liability within 15 days, or to contact the tax authority using the telephone number provided.
Street-level tax administrators working in the field play an important role, listening to and interfacing with defaulters strategically to obtain information about their circumstances, their current addresses, and their connection with the property. This information is then used to update the tax roll (GB01). This brings these defaulters under TAJ’s gaze, providing it with more knowledge of and access to them, and thereby enabling it to exercise more influence over them, which is a key factor in collecting (Powers
2008). In addition, physically locating them and obtaining this information significantly reduces TAJ’s search costs, ensuring that people entered on the roll as owners/occupiers are the true owners/occupiers of their land (Beale and Wyatt
2017, p.20).
Choosing option two, to contact TAJ, heralds the commencement of an intense personal relationship with TAJ, creating opportunities for tax administrators to listen, become curious and build narratives of defaulters, all of which helps them to identify and imagine defaulters’ circumstances. When defaulters make contact with TAJ on the telephone number given, TAJ logs their names, contact details, and liabilities in its register of collections:
We have a book over there [shows first author the record book]. They call, we put their names, the date, the amount that is outstanding, and when they are coming into pay. They say they can pay in two weeks. So we give them dates, we follow up. Every morning we have a page, and all the persons who are scheduled to pay in the next few days are called (STA32).
Some defaulters face high compliance costs owing to transportation challenges. A cabinet minister confirmed that, for some defaulters, “it costs more in transportation costs to go to pay the tax, than the tax itself” (PP17). Although an online system might solve this problem, these defaulters are unlikely to have access to such a system, despite internet availability.
2 Realizing that evasion is not necessarily a deliberate choice (see, for example, Hasseldine and Li
1999), and in keeping with its scheme to offer amicable strategies, TAJ’s response has been to provide outstations (temporary collection stations) to make it more convenient and cheaper for defaulters to pay. In the words of one senior administrator (STA32), “we know it takes two buses to come here, so we try to go to them,” showing consideration for their circumstances. However, providing outstations raises dilemmas such as threats of violence against staff, and theft of collections, a perennial issue in Jamaican society (Harriott
2003, p. 285). Outstations are therefore carefully planned with due cognizance of both convenience and safety issues. With regard to safety, TAJ often places outstations at police stations, as well as engaging security personnel to accompany staff. One tax administrator described this process:
We go out in the rural area and do the collections, and that is when we have security. The police just give us a little area and people come in and pay; at least we know that we are secured. But we have to make sure we have security to take us back with the money (STA31).
In terms of convenience, the practice is to place outstations in rural areas, open at weekends and outside normal working hours to make it easier for defaulters who find it challenging to use the regular stations or the online portal. This is a practical-sense approach to enforcement.
Discussion and Conclusion
This paper provides deeper insights into practices adopted by tax administrators to tackle large-scale tax evasion by defaulting individual property taxpayers. Specifically, it has explored how tax administrators adopt practical-sense approaches to enact amicable relational enforcement (Alasfour
2017; Alm and Torgler
2011; Chung and Trivedi
2003; Tuck
2010), and how enforcement practices are shaped by tax administrators’ and defaulters’ dispositions, cognitions, and sentiments (Bourdieu
1990; Bubandt and Willerslev
2015; Swartz
1997). Specifically, we have examined tax administrators’ empathy games, deepening our understanding of why and how tax administrators act as they do to arrive at decisions. We note that tax administrators are able to switch between two types of empathy—assimilated and cynical—in enforcing compliance. Each type is not necessarily tied solely to their moral makeup, but also to their perceptions of defaulters, implying that empathy is circumstantial (Hollan
2011, p. 206). Where empathetic administrators perceive defaulters to be more responsive, assimilated empathy is applied, showing some concern for defaulters. On the other hand, where defaulters are perceived to be less responsive or unresponsive, administrators take a more tactical approach to enforcement, displaying a sort of detached or switched off concern that might be construed as a harsh and deceptive example of cynical empathy. Each type of empathy reflects the level or type of justice applied to defaulters.
Our research conceives taxation as a social practice (Boden et al.
2010) and, in conceptual terms, as an institution undergirded by agents’ “dispositions, cognitions and sentiments” (Bird
2015). The study reveals that incentives facilitate vicarious tax practices where administrators engage in the “art of the possible” (Tanzi and Zee
2001, p. 2), creating new practices in the field (Bourdieu
1990), and giving them space to fulfill their self-interests. Unlike previous work on softer approaches to tax practices, this study provides deeper insights into tax administrators’ everyday approaches to enforcement, shaped by their practical sense.
Inspired by Bourdieu’s concept of practical sense, we have explored how empathy becomes a part of the enforcement game, and how tax administrators alter their positions from being objective law enforcers to becoming strategic empathizers in the enforcement game, based on their perceptions of defaulters. We have provided deeper insights into tax administrators’ actions, showing how identification with defaulters creates opportunities for innovative and new practices in the tax field. Such practices can be perceived as a means to an end, highlighting why practices in some situations do not follow normal tax logic (see Bourdieu and Wacquant
1992, p. 120). Thinking in terms of practical sense improves our understanding of how administrators’ awareness and appreciation of the field enables them to interpret the field conditions, and in so doing allows for opportunistic responses, making anticipatory adjustments to the field’s demands (Bourdieu
1990). Such practical-sense responses and adjustments may not always be rational or objective, but immediate, pre-reflective, cognitive, and embodied, occurring under conditions that exclude distance, perspective, detachment, and reflexivity (Bourdieu
1990, p. 82). Street-level tax administrators’ responses and adjustments are attempts to maintain social bonds (Gruen
2014) by securing defaulters’ commitment to and involvement with the property tax to make them accountable (Wynter and Oats
2018). This encourages them to become law-abiding and thus socially adjusted citizens, and is a key element of empathy (Komorosky and O’Neal
2015).
In identifying two types of empathy—assimilated and cynical—we shed light on how tax administrators seek to manage defaulters’ otherwise hidden behaviors and decisions (Keen
2008). The study also demonstrates how tax administrators are able to step into and step back from defaulters’ thoughts, feelings, and circumstances, and maintain their identities with a determined insistence on defaulters’ alterity/otherness (Bubandt and Willerslev
2015, p. 7). Empathy requires both intimate engagement and a measure of detachment (Rifkin
2009, p. 173), and it is this detachment that must be maintained to ensure a difference from the other. If tax administrators’ feelings spill completely into those of the defaulters, they will lose a sense of who they are as enforcers, compromising their ability to enforce compliance. Thus, even though they might understand the defaulters’ plight as if it were their own, they might be engulfed by it. If this were to happen, it would drown out their ability to be unique and separate from defaulters: they are agents of the state and must be seen as such. This is admittedly a rather fragile balance for them to strike, given that empathy requires a porous boundary between the empathizer and the other that somehow allows the two beings to mingle in a shared mental space (Rifkin
2009). Thus, they must maintain a distinction from the defaulters in order to assess the degree to which defaulters’ qualities or responsiveness match with their image or perspectives.
This is a sort of paradox, the play of identification and “othering,” which lies at the heart at empathetic faculty and detached concern for “others.” For those who are more responsive or co-operative, assimilated empathy is used and the degree of separation is less wide, showing some amount of concern. For less responsive defaulters, cynical empathy is used and the degree of separation is much wider to enact enforcement. Thus, empathetic identification with the “other” does not necessarily arise solely from inter-subjective compassion, nor concern for social cohesion, but sometimes also from agents’ perceptions of the “other.”
Tax enforcement may be hostile and even physically violent (Bräutigam
2008; Cullis and Lewis
1997). This study reveals that, even in the face of large-scale evasion, it need not be so when empathy is used. However, we argue that, hidden behind tax administrators’ “empathy games,” TAJ obliquely wields its power to assert its legitimacy and authority, revealing “subtle coercion,” as well as creating fear among some defaulters. Empathy in enforcement sometimes becomes a merely intellectual exercise, remaining squarely situated in the ethical position where “getting, acquiring, a tool to obtain an objective even though a good one” is met (Shapiro
2014, p. 279). This is so because empathetic identification with others is used as a skill rather than a moral virtue. Hence, agents are able to secure compliance, not as “conscious conformists to the regulations but as strategists … moving through a maze of constraints and opportunities” (Swartz
1997, p. 99). Through their actions, tax administrators may unwittingly perpetuate free-riding and tax evasion among some classes of defaulters who remain “legally derelict” (Byrne
1995, p. 119), which might be considered unjust.
Governments often motivate tax administrators through the use of incentives to secure compliance and increase revenue collection. Where incentives are narrowly focused on achieving revenue collection rather than increasing tax compliance and tax morale, they may lead to increased corruption and harassment of honest citizens (see Gangl et al.
2019, p. 109), undermining justice in the tax field. As agents of the state, administrators are expected to act in the public interest, through objective enforcement of the legislation to maintain equity, fairness, and trust in the tax authority and in themselves as public servants (Murphy
2005,
2008). However, this may be difficult for administrators when incentives are given without accompanying sets of institutional and enabling organizational structures, which we believe are absent in this case (Mookherjee
1998 citing Klitgaard 1995). We therefore argue that, alongside the use of targets, policies should be established to ensure that institutional and organizational issues such as task assignment, appropriate legislation, adequate resource allocation, feedback, and evaluation mechanisms are independently decided and in place (Mookherjee
1998 citing Klitgaard 1995), supported by an enabling court system (Cornia and Walters
2010) to assist tax administrators in their quest to maintain tax justice.
We have found that the practice of incentivized enforcement without due consideration for organizational and institutional issues creates a number of dilemmas in the property tax field. Since tax administrators must meet their targets, to “fit IMF programme conditions,”
5 little attention is paid to the makeup of collections (Auditor General’s Report
2016). Consequently, street-level tax administrators concentrate on defaulters who are least able to resist, leaving more resistant defaulters outside the tax net, thereby creating differential treatment of taxpayers. These hard-to-tax individuals remain without relationships with the state, as “non recognized beings,” having an “irrelevant presence” (see Bahl and Wallace
2007; Bauman
1993). Differential treatment of defaulters raises issues of tax injustice and unequal treatment of taxpayers, calling into question procedural fairness (due process), and retributive (punishing non-compliance) and distributive (equalizing the tax burden) justice (Elkins
2009; OECD
2010).
Enforcing a tax system is neither an easy nor a static task in any country (Bird and Zolt
2014), but is particularly challenging for developing countries. We have noted the level of tax administrators’ flexibility (May and Winter
2000) in bringing about compliance, in their bid to fulfill their ethical mandate to bring justice to the tax field and shape defaulters’ morality (Björklund Larsen
2017). However, this flexibility sometimes creates dilemmas. For example, outstations expose staff to potential violence, and add another layer of administrative costs to their operations. This reflects the constant balance faced by tax administrators to get the job done, even at risk to their lives. The level of flexibility that we have identified in Jamaican enforcement practices also calls attention to the present property tax legislation (PTL) and whether it is appropriate to Jamaica’s current socioeconomic situation (Wynter and Oats
2018). This has implications for property tax policy. There are sound arguments for the PTL to be amended to reflect the socioeconomic, historical, and demographic circumstances of modern Jamaica, as articulated by Wynter and Oats (
2018). Tax administrators’ ability to improvise also calls into question their enforcement ethics, because in their zeal they may use questionable tactics such as veiled threats, undue pressure, and bluffing, as seen when cynical empathy, a sort of detached concern, is deployed.
Tax administrators’ flexibility is also demonstrated in their tendency to concentrate on easier cases, as enforcement objectives seek not to improve tax morale but to increase revenue collections (Mansfield
1988). Although the targets may assist in providing adequate and steady revenue flows, as Bird (
1992, p. 197) suggests, they may also be an “innocuous device to keep tax administrators up to the mark.” Checks and balances should therefore be put in place to regulate tax administrators’ enthusiasm and ensure that they keep within the bounds of the law.
Since the property tax is centrally managed in Jamaica, there is a strong argument for it to be better integrated into the general tax system. For example, linking the property tax roll with the tax registration number (TRN) database would obviate the need for the many intense searches that place a strain on already meager resources. The property tax might conceivably then be integrated with other TAJ enforcement and compliance strategies, including audit and education programs. Alternatively, the tax could be fully localized, taking its own form, which might increase tax morale rather than revenues (Guth et al.
2005).
This study also raises the much wider question of the legitimacy of the state. When a government is considered legitimate, citizens will accept whatever is asked or imposed with little protest. In Jamaica, property tax evasion rates remain high, raising the question of whether citizens are challenging the legitimacy of the state or the property tax itself. Are they saying that this tax is no longer relevant, or questioning its present form? These questions must be addressed by policymakers.
The tax roll has been a source of discontent for many years (see Cornia and Walters
2010; Auditor General’s Report
2016). Around 50 percent of land parcels in Jamaica are unregistered, making it difficult to establish the true owners and occupiers of the land. This situation requires attention, as effective enforcement is largely dependent on the accuracy and completeness of the valuation roll. Identifying who is liable is of utmost importance.
One area for future research might be to examine the extent to which understandings of reasons for evasion gained through the reminder system are incorporated into tax policy reform, education, and the tax-drafting process. It is also worth considering whether using empathy brings a sustained change in compliant behavior, and the extent to which taxpayers’ perspectives of TAJ may change based on the use of empathy in the reminder system.