Us and them: the role of accounting in (re)creating social inequality through encounters with tax and welfare administration

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the nature of the UK welfare state: It expanded to new realms through the introduction of several new emergency financial support programmes for not only individuals, but also businesses. It also welcomed new ‘types’ of benefit claimants; individuals who had never claimed benefits and found themselves facing financial hardship and at risk of losing their job. This major change had potential to bring about a significant reshaping of the ever-longstanding discourse surrounding the welfare state. Yet, as the economy and society recover from the pandemic, the same (pre-COVID) neoliberal-based discourse surrounding the (un)deserving poor still permeates. In this chapter, I explore how accounting technologies (re)inforce such discourse in terms of the way people act and think in neoliberal ways through day-to-day tax and welfare administration at the frontline, recreating the sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in regard to who deserves government financial support and who does not, thus maintaining social inequality.