The Cambridge Tax Discussion Group is a PhD student run meeting group with weekly discussions of wide-ranging tax-related topics. We have been meeting weekly during term-time since 2015 and hope to continue with engaging topics that are tax or tangentially tax-related topics! This term, we are meeting fortnightly. We are friendly, open to all and interdisciplinary. We sincerely hope you will join us on our next online meeting which will be on Thursday 21 January at 17:00-18:00 (GMT). See our “Meetings” page for updated talks, links and previous topics covered.

This week’s talk can also be found on talks.cam along with an assortment of university-wide talks: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/156064

Abstract: The presentation examines the strategic role of tax in relation to Canada’s colonial administration of Indigenous nations and the broader role of tax in relation to settler colonialism. I will discuss some of the ongoing analytical problems in tax scholarship in relation to colonialism and look to build an approach that focusses on the informal and ideational life of tax. The case study examines the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, which paired ideas about transparency with taxation, accountability, and citizenship. I aim to show how the state bureaucracy aimed to re-make Indigenous political identity around ‘taxpaying’.

About Our Presenter

Kyle Willmott is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Working between political sociology, fiscal sociology, and economic sociology, his research attends to the cultural politics of taxation, Indigenous-settler relations, settler colonialism, and liberalism. His work has been published in Economy and Society and Critical Social Policy. He is Mohawk from the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nation.

More information, including a link to the meeting, can be found here: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/156064