Taxes and Trust
From Coercion to Compliance in Poland, Russia and Ukraine

Emphasizes how trust can turn a coercive tax state into a modern, legitimate one. This title is also available as Open Access.

Marc P. Berenson (Author)

9781108430098, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 January 2020

379 pages, 9 b/w illus. 18 tables
23 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.45 kg

'Berenson's Taxes and Trust merits status as a major contribution on an important topic of post-communist political economy. There is much to be learned that is new in this study. The book will also be of value to comparative taxation and political economy specialists more generally.' Gerald M. Easter, Canadian Slavonic Papers

Taxes and Trust is the first book on taxes to focus on trust and the first work of social science to concentrate on how tax policy actually gets implemented on the ground in Poland, Russia and Ukraine. It highlights the nuances of the transitional Ukraine case and explains precisely how and why that 'borderland' country differs from the more ideal-types of coercive Russia and compliance-oriented Poland. Through nine bespoke taxpayer surveys, an unprecedented bureaucratic survey and more than fifteen years of qualitative research, the book emphasizes the building and accumulation of trust to transition from a coercive tax state to a compliant one. The context of the book will appeal to students and scholars of taxation worldwide and to those who study Russia and Eastern Europe. This title is also available as Open Access.

1. From a coercive to a modern tax state
2. Trust and post-Communist policy implementation
3. Re-interpreting history to re-create the state: the transformation of the Polish, Russian and Ukrainian state bureaucracies in the 1990s and today
4. Creating post-Communist tax regimes and measuring tax compliance
5. Building trust, instilling fear: tax administration reform
6. Citizens, subjects and slackers and paying taxes
7. All together? Lack of trust in the tax state unifies Ukraine
8. Towards greater trust and tax compliance.

Subject Areas: Taxation [KFFD1], Political economy [KCP], Public administration [JPP]