The importance of tax collection for sustainable development cannot be overstated. It forms a central pillar of the United Nation’s Agenda 2030, but the strengthening of tax systems in the Global South has proved to be both complex and contentious. Scholars approaching this tax-for-development puzzle have tended to privilege interest- and institutional-based arguments to explain low levels of tax collection and problems with implementing tax reforms. This book takes a different approach, arguing that ideas about tax matter as much as interests and institutions for understanding social attitudes and responses to attempts by the state to raise revenues for development. Sometimes, contested ideas about the boundaries of the state in relation to tax and development come to shape the fault lines of politics and determine the success or failure of programmes to raise revenue for development. Using the case of Argentina, the book examines attempts by the populist-progressive governments of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner to finance state expenditure and social welfare via taxes on commodity (mainly soybean) exports after 2001. It traces how these taxes generated widespread conflict outside of the sector where they were levied, which polarized Argentine society. Taxing for Development shows that tax is a profoundly political problem, associated with debates about the role of the state, the market, and business–state relationships. In doing so, it shows how historically and socially constructed ideas of tax can become embedded in debates that have normally been approached through the perspective of material interests.

This book is included in DOAB.