The calculation and administration of taxes as an economising force: the case of UK Business Rates and local government financing

This chapter examines how the technicalities of calculating and administering taxes can be used as an economizing force and thus a way to exert neoliberal forms of control over the governing of a society. We study the case of UK business rates - a tax on business properties - using in-depth interviews and focus groups with professionals directly involved in formulating and implementing business rates policies. We identify how these policies are implicated in remaking local government authorities into economic actors in respect of business rates. This dimension of designing and deploying neoliberal tax policies involves an active, conscious effort to bring economic rationality and market logics into a domain where it is perceived to be lacking. We therefore reveal a hitherto unexamined dimension of the means by which tax systems can be used to perpetuate neoliberal ideologies within the governing of a society.