ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a cultural context for the laws of tax collection, within a comparative, UK/American structure. It attempts to present three of the inferences that a comparative, critical, cultural consideration of tax collection cultures in the USA and the UK has produced. The book argues that analysis of the culture of tax and its collection must take note of the status of tax legal scholarship, and its historical failure to keep pace with developments in legal theory. It suggests that critical cultural studies hold great promise for elucidation of this, at present, heavily criticized area of legal scholarship. Taxation is the appropriation of property by the state for the purpose of paying for government. A culture of taxation can be found in the mechanisms which are deployed to collect taxes, and in the responses to them among public and media.
