Expense the maids but not chairs: Deductible logics in comparative perspective

In most countries around the world, yearly tax returns involve deducting legitimate costs to lower the taxes owed. But what can be deducted, according to law and accounting expertise, varies hugely between tax systems. Taking a comparative perspective, this article brings together ethnographic data on deductible logics from Bolivia, Sweden and the UK, arguing that what is deductible in different tax systems, both legally and practically, impacts not only taxes owed but, through financial invectives and the perpetuation of logics, shapes wider society in multiple ways.

First, it enables and disables livelihoods; second, it creates socio-economic relationships; third, it impacts ideas of personhood and categorises activities. Deductibility is a key aspect of economic systems, a place where resource flows are managed and directed in accordance with wider socio-political logics. It is a space where we can clearly explore how fiscal rules interact with wider local cosmologies, such as questions about what work is and how boundaries between the private and the professional are produced.

Biography

Dr Miranda Sheild Johansson is an Associate Professor at University College London. She is also a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow.