The Ambiguous Taxation of Prostitution: the Role of Fiscal Arrangements in Hindering the Sexual and Economic Citizenship of Sex Workers

Abstract

This article explores the understudied and undertheorized role that fiscal policies play in shaping the relationship between the state and sex workers. It highlights the importance of looking at tax policy and its implementation to understand how inequality is reinforced against sexually marginalized populations. Drawing on the Italian case, it explores the ways in which ambiguous taxation arrangements operate to penalize sex workers, excluding them from the status of full taxpayer citizenship, and demonizing them as individuals who exploit the fiscal system at the expense of 'good' tax-paying citizens. Fiscal policies, I argue, need to be considered in the context of the governance of prostitution as social mechanisms that have the potential to contribute to the sexual and economic citizenship of this marginalized population, but which, when unequal and ambiguous, reinforce the social and political liminality of sex workers as lesser citizens, and add to the stigma, damaging stereotypes and violence already waged against them. The complex ways in which inequality against sex workers is maintained is revealed as a dynamic process that reflects the ever-shifting interplay of economics and morality.

Sex work and gendered tax imaginaries

“…The few studies that have looked specifically at the taxation of commercial sex have focussed on the attempts made by governments in different contexts to avoid being seen as actively extracting taxes from individuals or businesses operating in the sex industry, because doing so is viewed as legitimising and validating an otherwise stigmatised activity (Remick 2003;Richards 2017). In an effort to expand the understudied role that fiscal policies and practices play in shaping the citizenship of sex workers, my ongoing work in this area has explored the taxation of sex work in Italy (Crowhurst 2019a(Crowhurst , 2019b, and how it compares to policies, practices and their experiences in other European countries (Crowhurst, Chimienti and Oliveira forthcoming). Collectively, this body of work expands scholarship on the composite and rarely homogenous policies, laws and sanctions, their interpretation and implementation, that shape the governance of sex work.…”

“…Some stated that income from illegal activities such as prostitution should be taxed in the same way as any other illegal income. Others established that income from prostitution is legal and should be taxed in the same way as income from all other legal forms of self-employment (Crowhurst 2019a).…”

“…The processes through which taxes affect sex workers, a historically marginalised population across the globe, remain little explored. As discussed in more detail elsewhere (Crowhurst 2019a), taxes figure marginally in research on the governance of commercial sex, which mostly emphasises that their imposition falls short of granting sex workers full social and political recognition and legitimacy (Edwards 1997; Sauer 2004; Pitcher and Wijers 2014). The few studies that have looked specifically at the taxation of commercial sex have focussed on the attempts made by governments in different contexts to avoid being seen as actively extracting taxes from individuals or businesses operating in the sex industry, because doing so is viewed as legitimising and validating an otherwise stigmatised activity (Remick 2003; Richards 2017).…”

“…As argued elsewhere (Crowhurst 2019a), the decisions of the Supreme Courts of Appeal have not been followed through in tax systems and practices. Prostitution is still not included in the list of economic activities and codes ( codice Ateco) from which taxpayers must choose when registering with the Revenue Agency and filing their tax returns.…”

‘We should tax sex workers to fund subsidies for families’: shifting affective registers and enduring (sexual) norms in the Italian Northern League’s approach to prostitution

“…With a focus on the Italian context, this paper explores changes in the emotional and affective repertoires mobilized by the Northern League, a longstanding and successful radical right-wing populist party (Betz 1994) in Italy, to justify the new measures it proposes for the economically profitable regulation of prostitution. My interest in these developments emerges from an ongoing project on the taxation of prostitution, an aspect that is often overlooked in studies on the governance of commercial sex, despite having a notable impact on the economic and sexual citizenship of sex workers (Crowhurst 2019). Here, I am particularly interested in making sense of the centrality that the Northern League has ascribed to the taxation of prostitution in its recent political campaigns and the approach developed to justify it.…”