Paying for Identity: the Formation of Differentiated Collectives through Taxes

Abstract

If paying taxes is a form of overt support, as David Easton noticed, we cannot understand it without looking at the normalization of paying taxes on which it relies: the making and molding of citizens into tax payers who (mostly) pay their taxes voluntarily. Yet how are we to analyze this complex process? In this paper, we sketch a theoretical framework derived from Michel Foucault’s analytics of power. We concentrate on the power of taxes and how it affects the identity-formation or subjectivation of citizens. Looking specifically at income taxation, we provide an overview of the different forms of power and of the different subject positions thereby created, using the early history of establishing a direct income tax in Germany and the USA to illustrate our conceptual framework.