5:30pm (BST) / 6:30pm (CEST)
In times of tight public finances, the question of (dis)honest payment of taxes often comes to the fore: who has contributed to the financing of public goods for the community, who has tried to evade this obligation, and what are the consequences? Throughout history, tax scandals have become an arena for the study such negotiation processes. This lecture thus examines tax scandals from Spain, West Germany, and the USA from the 1950s through to the 1980s, in which the practices of companies, VIPs, or tax authority staff were scrutinized and found to be morally questionable. The lecture explores how societies used these scandals to renegotiate their norms regarding payment of taxes—and demonstrates how closely tax payment was linked to other major moral issues such as the relationship between the state and its citizens, or between citizens of unequal status.