Tax administrators are empowered by the state to secure compliance with tax obligations. Enforcing compliance on the ground
is complex, and street-level administrators often engage in the “art of the possible,” leading to dilemmas in the feld. This
paper examines tax administrators’ practices with regard to Jamaican property tax ...
Tax administrators are empowered by the state to secure compliance with tax obligations. Enforcing compliance on the ground
is complex, and street-level administrators often engage in the “art of the possible,” leading to dilemmas in the feld. This
paper examines tax administrators’ practices with regard to Jamaican property tax defaulters with outstanding tax liabilities
in excess of 3 years. Drawing on interviews with tax administrators and other key agents, we fnd that tax administrators
reposition themselves from objective enforcers to empathizing ofcials engaging in schemes of action, doing what they can
do rather than what they should do. This is a practical-sense approach to securing compliance. We identify two forms of
empathy, assimilated and cynical, and conclude that administrators’ empathetic identifcation with defaulters does not necessarily arise solely from concern for social cohesion, or inter-subjective compassion, but also sometimes from self-interest.