Tax evasion for market control: Predatory economies in practice

Descrizione del progetto

Uno sguardo più attento alle economie predatorie in Croazia

L’evasione fiscale aziendale di enormi conglomerati contribuisce alla volatilità finanziaria locale e porta alla precarietà economica. Il progetto AnthroTax, finanziato dall’UE, userà una struttura innovativa dello «scambio di ostaggi» per concettualizzare le varie pratiche finanziarie locali di evasione fiscale in Croazia. Il progetto concentrerà l’attenzione su vinificatori a conduzione familiare in Istria e sul loro rapporto commerciale con un enorme conglomerato agroindustriale. Conducendo ricerca etnografica sul campo e coniugando concetti antropologici classici con l’economia aziendale, AnthroTax mostrerà come vengono costruiti gli attuali scambi di mercato predatori e in che modo l’evasione fiscale viene istituita come una caratteristica apparentemente «naturale» dell’attività quotidiana. I risultati promuoveranno la teoria nell’ambito degli studi tributari fondamentali e genereranno conoscenze preziose circa le economie predatorie nell’Europa post-socialista.

Obiettivo

Tax evasion is an economic justice issue in contemporary Croatia. Corporate tax evasion by massive conglomerates contributes to local financial volatility. Bad financial practices at the top of this chain result in economic precarity at its other end. AnthroTax conceptualizes the various local financial practices of tax evasion with a novel framing of ‘hostage barter’. It employs ethnographic field research methods to study how such practices play out between family winemakers in Istria, Croatia, and a massive agribusiness conglomerate with which they do business. This interdisciplinary project combines classic anthropological concepts with business studies to show how contemporary predatory market exchanges are constructed and how tax evasion is enacted as an apparent ‘natural’ feature of everyday business. The researcher seeks to understand how the emerging economic system works, how hostage barter has become an inevitability of everyday business, how gender influences its practice, and what hostage barter can teach us about predatory economies in wider post-socialist Europe. AnthroTax will advance theory in critical tax studies by introducing a wholly new concept into the field and bring valuable insight to tax evasion processes that will contribute to both academia and government. Placing an anthropologist at one of Europe’s best business schools, particularly for interdisciplinary, qualitative research, AnthroTax represents an unparalleled training-through-research opportunity for the scholar to advance her creative and innovative research potential. AnthroTax’s interdisciplinarity, methodological strengths, and integration into targeted CBS research groups will facilitate diversification of her competences via skills acquisition, advanced training, and mobility both internationally and intersectorally. It will enhance cooperation between networks and facilitate a transfer of knowledge not just institutionally, but outside academia to myriad relevant groups.