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Customers? The reconstruction of the ‘taxpayer’ in Inland Revenue discourse and practice
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Tuck, Penelope, Lamb, Margaret and Hoskin, Keith. (2011) Customers? The reconstruction of the ‘taxpayer’ in Inland Revenue discourse and practice. Accounting and Business Research, Vol.41 (No.4). pp. 357-374. ISSN 0001-4788
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00014788.2011.566015
Abstract
References to ‘customers’ have become commonplace in the policy discourses within UK government and other public sector bodies. It is a working assumption of UK public sector management that the concept of the ‘customer’ can be applied to any public sector service agency or department; and this paper analyses how the UK government's revenue department, formerly titled the Inland Revenue (IR), re-characterised firstly taxpayers and latterly tax claimants as ‘customers’, rather than ‘users’, of IR services. This paper identifies some problems, dilemmas and ambiguities associated with this reconceptualisation in the context of an organisation that is predominantly a regulating department. Far from being merely a reclassification of the taxpayer as customer, the emerging discourse and associated practices of the IR were in part embedded in organisational change, including the merger with HM Customs and Excise to form the present-day HMRC. Thus this case analysis illustrates the limits of consumerism as a strategic tool of a government revenue department and raises wider questions for public management.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > International Centre for Governance & Public Management Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School |
| Journal or Publication Title: | Accounting and Business Research |
| Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
| ISSN: | 0001-4788 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| Volume: | Vol.41 |
| Number: | No.4 |
| Number of Pages: | 18 |
| Page Range: | pp. 357-374 |
| Identification Number: | 10.1080/00014788.2011.566015 |
| Status: | Peer Reviewed |
| Publication Status: | Published |
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
| URI: | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/44699 |
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