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Histories of Tax Evasion, Avoidance and Resistance
Tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax resistance are widespread phenomena in political, economic, social and fiscal history from antiquity through medieval, early modern and modern times. Histories of Tax Evasion, Avoidance and Resistance shows how different groups and individuals around the globe have succeeded or failed in not paying their due taxes, whether in kind or in cash, on their properties or on their crops.
It analyses how, throughout history, wealthy and poor taxpayers have tried to avoid or reduce their tax burden by negotiating with tax authorities, through practices of legal or illegal tax evasion, by filing lawsuits, seeking armed resistance or by migration, and how state authorities have dealt with such acts of claim making, defiance, open resistance or elusion. It fills an important research gap in tax history, addressing questions of tax morale and fairness, and how social and political inequality was negotiated through taxation. It gives rich insights into the development of citizen-state relationships throughout the course of history. The book comprises case studies from Ancient Athens, Roman Egypt, Medieval Europe, Early Modern Mexico, the Ottoman Empire, Nigeria under British colonial rule, the United Kingdom of the early 20th century, Greece during the Second World War, as well as West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and the United States in the 20th century, including transnational entanglements in the world of late-modern offshore finance and taxation. The authors are experts in fiscal, economic, financial, legal, social and/or cultural history.
The book is intended for students, researchers and scholars of economic and financial history, social and world history and political economy.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license.
List of figures and tables
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Ability and Intention of Not Paying Taxes in History: Some Introductory Observations
Korinna Schönhärl, Gisela Hürlimann, Dorothea Rohde
Part 1: Negotiating Lower Taxes, or No Taxes at All
Chap. 1: Tax Evaders in Classical Athens? Attacks and Strategies of Defence in Attic Oratory
Lucia Cecchet
Chap. 2: The Alcabala Sales Tax Administration in Colonial Mexico: Avoidance Strategies in Bourbon Colonial Mexico (1723-1754)
Rodrigo Gordoa de la Huerta
Chap. 3: Imperial Taxation and Local Agency: Tax Avoidance and Tax Resistance in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Germany (Saxony and Thuringia)
Rachel Renault
Part 2: Resisting and Opposing Taxes
Chap. 4: Not Paying Taxes in Roman Egypt
Kerstin Droß-Krüpe
Chap. 5: "Taxing" the Tribes in the Ottoman Empire: The Case of the Tribes of Mutki (1839-1908)
Yener Koç
Chap. 6: Tax Evasion as Means of Resistance in Occupied Greece, 1941-1944
Vasilis G. Manousakis
Chap. 7: Women´s Protests against Colonial Taxation in the Eastern Provinces of Nigeria
Daniel Olisa Iweze
Part 3: Avoiding Tax Avoidance: Counter Strategies by State Authorities
Chap. 8: Verbally Resisting Taxes in Medieval England: Arguments, Anger and the (In)Ability to Prevent Tax-Avoidance in the Reign of Henry III
Christina Bröker
Chap. 9: How to Create a Taxpaying Spirit: A Transnational Examination of a US American and a Western German Tax Education Film in and after World War II
Korinna Schönhärl
Chap. 10: "Exceptional" Tax Amnesties: A Common Swiss Way of Fighting Tax Fraud in the Twentieth Century
Aniko Fehr, Sylvain Praz
Part 4: Sparing the Rich and Companies from Taxation
Chap. 11: "There is no wrongdoing in avoiding taxes." The Land Union’s Tax Resistance in Great Britain (1900–1930s)
Anna Grotegut
Chap. 12: Populist Ambivalence to Tax Evasion: The 1962 Campaign against Dividend and Interest Withholding in the US
Steven A. Bank
Chap. 13: "I am a professional tax evader". Multinationals, Business Groups and Tax Havens, 1950s to 1980s
Boris Gehlen, Christian Marx
Chap. 14: Tax System Credibility vs. Banking System Reputation? Tax Evasion from Sweden to Switzerland in the Early 1970s
Thibaud Giddey, Mikael Wendschlag
Index
Biography
Korinna Schönhärl is the Heisenberg-Professor for Modern History at Paderborn University, Germany.
Gisela Hürlimann is professor of history of technology and economic history at the Technical University (TU) Dresden, Germany.
Dorothea Rohde is a lecturer of ancient history at the University of Bielefeld, Germany.
