ABSTRACT
Recent developments suggest a certain shift in common-sense thinking about taxation and the rich – or, at the very least, of the availability of a potential resource for the critical contestation of neo-liberal tax regimes. “The rich” have been discursively constructed as tax avoiders in the crisis years of the 2010s, which has also been exploited by political parties on the left. The chapter considers the political implications of this shift, mainly the new visibility of tax-avoiding elites, and the extent to which it creates opportunities to challenge the neo-liberal ideas that have become embedded in common sense about taxation. It evaluates the new visibility of elites as tax avoiders and their activation as adversaries in left politics and considers the opportunities that the political salience of tax avoidance in the 2010s presents to political actors of the left. While the construction of elites as tax avoiders has helped to foreground the ways in which neo-liberal capitalism is designed to favour the economic interests of the few, it has not supported the consolidation of diverse grievances against the current economic system into a general political demand: While the “elite tax avoiders” formulation brings the rich sharply into focus and draws attention to their location in an economic system which perpetuates inequality, it does not tell us what to do about them. Debate about taxation delivers significant potential to illuminate the ways in which neo-liberal capitalism is designed to favour the economic interests of the super-rich, but we lack alternative fiscal imaginaries that would support common-sense understandings of the importance of tax justice outside of a fiscal crisis.
