Foucault and Tax Jurisprudence:  On the Creation of a “Delinquent” Class of Taxpayer

Abstract

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault described the role of the “disciplinary institution” in the formation of modern society. An example of such a modern Foucauldian disciplinary institution is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS currently devotes a substantial portion of its enforcement efforts against small businesses and low-income individual taxpayers. The IRS collection activity, as directed against low-income taxpayers, often manifests in Foucault´s “Philadelphia”-style prison, but without walls. The delinquent taxpayer becomes the delinquent social class with a diminished earning capacity, thereby directly undermining the reformatory goal of punishment. This audit process is a very different enforcement process than applied to large corporate taxpayers where the IRS continues to follow a “policy of restraint” with regard to the auditing of aggressive corporate tax positions.

Keywords

Jurisprudence, Tax Law, Foucault

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Authors

Bret N. Bogenschneider (Vienna University of Economics and Business)

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