A study of the changing relationship between large corporates and the Inland Revenue

This thesis addresses the following research questions: 1. How is the process of corporate tax compliance changing for large groups of companies? 2. How is this process being managed by the Inland Revenue? The empirical evidence consists of 33 interviews conducted in 2002-04 with IR officials; tax directors and tax managers of large corporates; and tax partners from a Big 4 accounting firm. This· thesis also draws upon archival data including state papers and documentary data from the IR. Theoretically this thesis draws from the new public management, administration, and the tax compliance literatures. However I argue that an approach grounded purely i!1 these literatures does not adequately explain the changing tax compliance environment for large groups. Therefore I utilise other literatures which draw 'on Foucault's work on multiple expertise constructing subjects engaging with disciplinary knowledge and power, to assist in filling this gap. Against a backdrop where new organisational structures and processes are shifting a once bureaucratic Inland Revenue to a more strategic and marketing-based organisation, the corporate tax compliance process for large corporates has changed. Where the process was previously a long (in terms of time scale), formal and distant relationship with the IR carried out principally in writing, it has, while retaining aspects of this past, shifted towards being a mixture of the written and the oral, generating a more incll;lSive dialogue with the taxpayer, frequently in the form of meetings based on targeted yet potentially open-ended questioning. This has opened up what is described here as a new kind of 'truth game', which is less one based on inquisitorial practices but more based on examination techniques, played by knowledge experts: the IR official and the corporate taxpayer. Drawing on a governmentality framework as articulated by Foucault and his latter works, I argue that the nature of the corporate tax compliance game resembles a truth game between two kinds of subject generated in this transdisciplinary world: the new shape tax official and the visible customer (the taxpayer). The IR official - the lIM Inspector of Taxes, has been remoulded from one type of knowledge expert to another, which is a 3 dimensional transdisciplinary T shaped tax official. This is a tax official who both has the detailed deep technical knowledge as a knowledge expert but also has to relate, in a broader sense, to the new way of operating in a strategic and marketing organisation. The emergence of the corporate taxpayer as a visible customer has changed the process of corporate tax compliance for large corporates whereby they exercise certain power in the relationship by virtue ofthis visibility. This research tracks a new kind of interaction of the interplay between subjectivization and objectivization which seems to have become established and develops a theoretically informed way of looking at emergent governmental and more wide ranging forms of application

A study of the changing relationship between large corporates and the Inland Revenue

This thesis addresses the following research questions: 1. How is the process of corporate tax compliance changing for large groups of companies? 2. How is this process being managed by the Inland Revenue? The empirical evidence consists of 33 interviews conducted in 2002-04 with IR officials; tax directors and tax managers of large corporates; and tax partners from a Big 4 accounting firm. This· thesis also draws upon archival data including state papers and documentary data from the IR. Theoretically this thesis draws from the new public management, administration, and the tax compliance literatures. However I argue that an approach grounded purely i!1 these literatures does not adequately explain the changing tax compliance environment for large groups. Therefore I utilise other literatures which draw 'on Foucault's work on multiple expertise constructing subjects engaging with disciplinary knowledge and power, to assist in filling this gap. Against a backdrop where new organisational structures and processes are shifting a once bureaucratic Inland Revenue to a more strategic and marketing-based organisation, the corporate tax compliance process for large corporates has changed. Where the process was previously a long (in terms of time scale), formal and distant relationship with the IR carried out principally in writing, it has, while retaining aspects of this past, shifted towards being a mixture of the written and the oral, generating a more incll;lSive dialogue with the taxpayer, frequently in the form of meetings based on targeted yet potentially open-ended questioning. This has opened up what is described here as a new kind of 'truth game', which is less one based on inquisitorial practices but more based on examination techniques, played by knowledge experts: the IR official and the corporate taxpayer. Drawing on a governmentality framework as articulated by Foucault and his latter works, I argue that the nature of the corporate tax compliance game resembles a truth game between two kinds of subject generated in this transdisciplinary world: the new shape tax official and the visible customer (the taxpayer). The IR official - the lIM Inspector of Taxes, has been remoulded from one type of knowledge expert to another, which is a 3 dimensional transdisciplinary T shaped tax official. This is a tax official who both has the detailed deep technical knowledge as a knowledge expert but also has to relate, in a broader sense, to the new way of operating in a strategic and marketing organisation. The emergence of the corporate taxpayer as a visible customer has changed the process of corporate tax compliance for large corporates whereby they exercise certain power in the relationship by virtue ofthis visibility. This research tracks a new kind of interaction of the interplay between subjectivization and objectivization which seems to have become established and develops a theoretically informed way of looking at emergent governmental and more wide ranging forms of application.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceInstitute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICA)GBUnited Kingdo

From commodification to entrepreneurialism : how commercial income is transforming the English NHS

IMPACT The authors explore the way in which National Health Service (NHS) organizations in England are becoming more entrepreneurial through seeking more commercial income. As a form of commodification, commercialization has become more salient because of tightened public spending and the relaxation of regulations governing the scale of commercial income that the NHS could earn (since 2012). In turn, a stronger entrepreneurial ethos and practice has developed. The purpose and impact of commercialization is examined using secondary data from six NHS organizations (narrating developments post-2012), demonstrating the extent of and their justifications for commercialization. Recent and planned changes are explained. These income-generation activities, which are often set up to support or maintain existing NHS services, may unwittingly accelerate further commercialization—particularly in post-pandemic recovery. The authors conclude that the NHS risks becoming predicated upon commercial logics, thereby undermining public service logics. ABSTRACT Commodification of health services involves objects that can be traded—private patients’ facilities, treatments for international patients and the development of joint ventures and trading entities. This article explores the extent to which the NHS in England is becoming more commercial in its aims and practices, and how this is being justified. The authors focus on the commercial income of six NHS trusts who are thought to be at the forefront of this development. The income the trusts are generating is examined using the lens of competing institutional logics and of Polanyi’s ‘double movement’ thesis

The emergence of the tax official into a T-shaped knowledge expert

Public sector officials have had to engage in new ways of working to reflect the changing practices of the public sector. This paper uses the specific case of professional tax officials in the UK tax administration to examine this broader context, by a longitudinal study. Tax officials are being disciplined by the changing working practices of the tax administration. The tax official becomes a T-shaped tax official who has emerged from a bureaucratic inward facing technical civil servant to become an outward facing new style tax official who still has to engage with the detailed technical tax knowledge as a knowledge expert (the vertical part of the T) but also has to relate to the new way of operating in a strategic and marketing organisation (the horizontal part of the T). This changing role of the tax official has tax policy implications and impacts on the social and organizational aspects of the tax compliance process