Distributed fiscal relations and their imaginaries: Metaphors of redistribution and reciprocity in struggles about distributive justice in Austria

Abstract

The article analyzes struggles about distributive justice in Austria, one of the wealthiest countries globally, and proposes a reinforced focus on how metaphors of redistribution and reciprocity create fiscal imaginaries. It analyzes how politicians, lobbyists, and activists strategically mobilize these metaphors in corporate and wealth taxation debates. Campaigns against wealth taxation portray wealth taxation as negative reciprocity and a threat to an imagined middle class. Those arguing in favor of them create images of unjustly appropriated value that needs to be redistributed. The article analyzes those shifts between notions of redistribution and reciprocity and the fiscal imaginaries created through these debates. Notably, the article argues for the necessity to embed discursive analysis within an understanding of contemporary capitalisms. It contrasts the fiscal imaginaries with challenges of fiscal relations, most importantly the distributed character of capital accumulation and the dilemma of the tax state, as governments orchestrate accumulation to capture parts of its value generated via taxation.

Taxation and the Polanyian forms of integration in socialist and postsocialist Hungary

“…Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. ORCID Chris Hann https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1836-6284 ENDNOTES 1 For further comparative exploration of taxation practices in terms of (perceived or imagined) reciprocity, justice, and moral claims, see Streinzer (2023) and Streinzer and Terpe (2023). 2 The reasons for tweaking the vocabulary and dropping "householding" from the set in the 1950s need not concern us here (see Gregory, 2009).…”

“…1 1 For further comparative exploration of taxation practices in terms of (perceived or imagined) reciprocity, justice, and moral claims, see Streinzer (2023) and Streinzer and Terpe (2023). …”