Taxpayer Citizenship and Prostitution

Far from being innocuous bureaucratic procedures, taxes are central markers of civil belonging and of what is referred to as taxpayer citizenship, i.e. the enjoyment of political legitimacy through taxpayer status (Walsh 2017; Hackell 2013). This paper explores the under-studied and under-theorized nexus between taxation and prostitution, and sheds light on the role of fiscal policies in shaping the relationship between the state and sex workers.

The discussion of these dynamics draws on the Italian case. Here, the stigma associated with prostitution, and the institutional and social violence that this begets, is compounded also by the inequality and ambiguity of fiscal measures on the treatment of commercial sex. Taxation arrangements that penalize and exclude sex workers from the enjoyment of full taxpayer citizenship contribute to fuelling a rhetoric of demonization towards them as individuals who exploit the fiscal system at the expense of law abiding ‘good citizens’. However, recent shifts in the body of values, norms and beliefs that inform the regulation and taxation of prostitution in the context of austerity measures suggest a move towards a re-articulation of this marked distinction between good and bad citizens. An increasing number of prostitution policy proposals and public and political debates now support the introduction of regulationist systems aimed primarily at the taxation of commercial sex activities. In this context, sex workers, outcast and marginalised for decades, are now called upon to make a contribution towards the collective effort to fight the current economic crisis and join the ranks of ‘good citizenship’ by paying income tax on their sex work-related earnings. The paper interrogates the significance of these changes, the forces that underpin them, and their potential implications for the notion of citizenship.