How tax administration influences social justice: The relational power of accounting technologies

Abstract

This article advances understanding of how tax administration influences social justice. Critical accounting research is paying increasing attention to social justice, but conceptualisations and empirical studies of tax administration are scarce. Drawing on Bourdieu’s social theory, we analyse how accounting technologies exercise relational power that reproduces or worsens socio-economic inequalities. Our critical ethnography of the Tax Credits (TC) system in the United Kingdom identifies four original practices through which claimants interact with accounting technologies. We reveal how claimants utilise certain types of capital to play the game of the TC system and reproduce their habitus and position of powerlessness in the field. While some claimants manage to play the game successfully and improve their position, most end up ‘giving in’ to living with financial and emotional hardship and accepting the relational power of the field. We conclude by developing a research and reform agenda for analysing and changing the relational power of accounting technologies in tax administration towards social justice.