The Moral Economy of Street Level Taxation in Reform-Era China: From Tax Inspection to Big Data

Yingyao Wang, University of Virginia

Street-level taxation extends the sinews of state power to the very interface of state and society, constituting one of the fundamental arenas through which citizens engage with the state. The institutions, technologies, and managerial methods employed by street-level tax agents to render society legible and taxable have profound implications for the dynamics of state-society relations. This article investigates the metamorphosis of street-level taxation in reform-era China in the past three decades, documenting a significant shift in tax administration, encompassing changes in how tax information is gathered, payments are processed, and interactions occur between bureaucrats and businesses. The paradigmatic shift involves a transition from the collection of individualized knowledge about enterprises through intimate and often conflictual interactions between tax officials and taxpayers, to the acquisition of global knowledge on the economy and industries through the utilization of big-data, computer-based technologies, and arm’s length management. Contrary to conventional concerns that big data and digital technologies diminish the discretion of street-level bureaucrats, potentially rendering their role redundant, this research reveals that technology unloads the burden of attaining legibility for tax collectors. Instead, it affords them a breaching space to exercise moral judgment more effectively vis-à-vis local society. Drawing on historical analysis and ethnographic research, I demonstrate that the primary mechanism for exercising moral agency lies in negotiations between tax officers and enterprises for reducing flagged "risks" based on their economic data. Consequently, I posit that discretion persists in the era of big data, manifesting as an agnostic pursuit of data discrepancies, which enables the application of “good enough” moral-economic principles in tax collection. In sum, this paper reflects on the mediation of technology in state-society interactions and the unintended consequences introduced by the advent of big data in reshaping human agency and moral disposition.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 14. Taxes, Business, and Society