Towards a Fiscal Sociology of Tax Credits and the Fathers' Rights Movement
| Date | 01 June 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663908089613 |
| Published date | 01 June 2008 |
| Author | Ann Mumford |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
OF TAX CREDITS AND THE
FATHERS’ RIGHTS MOVEMENT
ANN MUMFORD
Queen Mary, University of London, UK
ABSTRACT
The case of Hockenjos v Secretary of State (2004) held that a father who was denied the
childcare element of Jobseekers’ Allowance (a benefit which now has been repealed)
had been ‘discriminated against’. The case was litigated by a fathers’ rights activist,
and has been hailed both as an important victory for the wider ‘movement’, and as a
step towards obtaining child tax credits for fathers who live separately from their
children. This article argues that efforts by the UK fathers’ rights movement to obtain
child tax credits, in particular, reflect an attempt to use the tax system to force an allo-
cation of rights. This thesis is advanced through a fiscal sociological analysis, largely
because the insights into the role of class in the functioning of economies that are
offered by a Marxian analysis are made accessible to tax scholars through fiscal sociol-
ogy. These perspectives are particularly important in an analysis of tax credits, given
that the architects of these ‘Third Way’ initiatives very much had class mobility in mind.
KEY WORDS
fiscal sociology; Giddens; Hockenjos; Marx; tax credits; ‘Third Way’
INTRODUCTION
THEFATHERS’ RIGHTSmovement has sought to change many aspects of
the legal system (Fineman, 1988, 1991; Hunt, 1990; Coltrane and
Hickman, 1992; Mason, 1996), including tax law (Holtzman, 2006: 9).
A recent success for the movement involving tax law, specifically, is the case
of Hockenjos v Secretary of State (2004), which concerned an action success-
fully waged by a father who had been denied the child-related elements of
Jobseekers Allowance (Jobseeker’s Allowance Regulations, 1996: Reg. 77), a
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore, www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 17(2), 217–235
DOI: 10.1177/0964663908089613
218
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 17(2)
benefit typically afforded to mothers. The decision contained some striking
dicta condemning the government for allowing aspects of the tax and benefits
system to discriminate against men. These dicta will be a starting point for
this article, which will consider the fathers’ rights movement within the
context of fiscal sociology.
A fiscal sociological perspective will enable consideration of the Hockenjos
case as part of a campaign for tax credits waged by the fathers’ rights
movement, an effort which reveals the movement’s vision of the ‘tax state’
(Musgrave, 1992). A central point of investigation will be what fathers’ rights
groups hope to achieve by reform of the benefits and social security system
(Giersch, 1984), so as to take account of what they describe as the true costs
of shared care of children by parents who do not live together (Smart, 1991).
The language and policies of this campaign indicate that the fathers’ rights
movement may be more interested in seeking ‘rights’ (Smart, 2004), or in
lodging a form of protest against their treatment in the courts (Collier, 1996),
than in money. This article will discuss why the plaintiff’s organization,
Fathercare, targeted tax credits as a form of legal recognition for parenting.
Tax credits were designed to teach the virtues of paid employment to
families with children (Lewis, 2006). This article will consider the origin of
the clash between fathers, mothers by implication, and the tax system. If the
conflict simply is between class and gender, between assistance (for mothers)
and acknowledgment (for fathers), then why has the tax system, and the tax
credit system in particular, been the focus of this dispute? The article will
consider this question, and the interaction between the fathers’ rights move-
ments and the modern tax credit system, and, in particular, whether efforts
to ameliorate gender inequality inevitably must conflict with efforts to
address poverty and class. Fiscal sociology will provide a framework for
consideration of these issues.
FISCAL SOCIOLOGY: MARXISM FOR TAX LAWYERS
RENEWING INTEREST
Introducing economic considerations into activities of the private sphere,
such as parenting, can have a confusing impact (Machan, 1994), even without
considerations of gender (Fraser, 1990; Lewis, 1992a; Duncombe and Marsden,
1993). For example, does putting a price on an activity such as parenting, or
housework, raise or lower it in the public estimation (Weigers, 1992)? Addi-
tionally, are some activities too precious or important for cost analysis (Blum
and Vandewater, 1993)? These questions are particularly difficult when class
differences are taken into account (Fraser, 1990).1
This section will provide a brief introduction to fiscal sociology, which is
but one vein of research that has addressed the issues above (see also, inter
alia, Pascall, 1997; Gouthro, 2005), although it typically has done so within
the boundaries of economics and sociology. Even within the disciplines of
MUMFORD: A FISCAL SOCIOLOGY OF TAX CREDITS
219
economics and sociology, however, a typical complaint about fiscal sociol-
ogy is that, although interesting, it is not very popular.2 First developed by
Rudolph Goldscheid and Joseph Schumpeter in the early 20th century, fiscal
sociology addresses the importance of the emergence of an organized system
of tax collection as a means of funding government (Backhaus, 2002). The
start of the Second World War had a deleterious impact upon its dissemi-
nation, such that fiscal sociology largely did not receive much attention for
the latter half of the 20th century, although this is changing. The renewal of
interest in Schumpeter’s work, in particular, was marked by the publication
of an important 2002 special edition of the American Journal of Economics
and Sociology, dedicated to fiscal sociology.
Fiscal sociology deserves this attention. The core of Goldscheid and
Schumpeter’s arguments is that once ‘pillage and plunder’ were abandoned
in favour of tax collection, the fundamental elements of societies, govern-
ments and markets began to emerge (McClure, 2003; van der Veen, 2003). As
the roots of modern governmental conflict and decision-making can be traced
back to the inception of a country’s tax system, many of Goldscheid and
Schumpeter’s studies start in the early 17th century (McClure, 2003). Fiscal
sociology has evolved over the past ten years or so to include socio-legal,
constitutional, and other influences upon public finance.
Fiscal sociology, as viewed by Schumpeter, was a subgenre of economics
(Backhaus, 2002). He believed that fiscal sociology was best exemplified by
the works of Franz Oppenheimer, who argued that a ‘land barrier’, described
as a combination of rising property values and congestion in cities, perpetu-
ated poverty and the ill-health associated with it; and, as a remedy for this,
advocated David Ricardo’s theory of inframarginal land rent (Backhaus,
2002, 2004). Similarly, Werner Sombart, who founded the economic sub-
discipline of comparative economic systems, and Gustav von Schmoller,
who, among many other things, argued the importance of both quantitative
and qualitative economic and sociological research, were hailed as important
writers in the fiscal sociological tradition.
Schumpeter’s fiscal sociology was not engaged in solely for historical
curiosity, however, and he has been hailed as a writer from an era in which
economists still worried about the ‘real world’ (Boron, 1999: 51). Indeed,
fiscal sociology has been relied upon to analyse issues as diverse as a Japanese
property tax revolt (Jinno and DeWit, 1998), and the interaction between tax
policy and support for the welfare state in Finland (Blomberg and Kroll, 1999).
THE ‘TAX STATE’
Schumpeter is famed for observing that ‘the thunder of world history can be
heard best in the realm of public finance’ (Murray and Mulgan, 1993: 39). He
cared, in particular, about the lessons that the past had for the economically
troubled Germany of the 1930s, but also looked beyond its borders (James,
1984; Swedberg, 1991). Schumpeter began writing at a time when previously
220
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 17(2)
localized questions of economy and governance were beginning to be
considered within an international framework, and thus argued that his fiscal
sociology could explain patterns of international economic activity (Campbell,
2005). Yet he never lost his focus on localized questions surrounding, for
example, the structure of taxation, and very much viewed Marx as an inspi-
ration (Schumpeter, 1950, 1983).
It was Keynes, perhaps, whom Schumpeter viewed as a primary antago-
nist (Schumpeter et al., 1932/1982; Giersch, 1984). Thus, Schumpeter’s fiscal
sociology began with his enthusiastic reception of Goldscheid’s analysis, in
Marxian terms, of the history of tax struggles (Deutsch, 1956). Marx does not
offer very much to tax legal studies (Friedman, 1974) since, despite the wealth
of insight offered by Marx’s analyses of economy and history, he seldom
discussed tax, and his work actually ‘contain[s] only scattered references to
fiscal matters’ (Musgrave, 1980: 361). Marx described taxation as ‘an instru-
ment of class struggle’, and argued that progressive taxation was a useful
weapon against the capitalist order,3 but offered little detail. Thus, it was
Goldscheid who offered ‘the first full-fledged effort at analyzing the fiscal
role of the state in Marxist terms’ (Musgrave, 1980: 362).
Given the potential appeal of Marxian analysis of government and econ-
omies to tax scholars, and the...
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