Street-level bureaucracy meets Big Data: The moral economy of taxation in China in the digital age

Abstract

This article investigates the impact of digital technology and big data analytics on street-level bureaucracy. Building onto literature that highlights the residual autonomy and resistance of practitioners against big data governance, this article advances a more nuanced thesis, arguing that bureaucrats’ discretion and moral judgments are reconstituted rather than simply retained or eliminated by digital governance. Using the metamorphosis of street-level taxation in China as a strategic case study, the article documents a paradigmatic shift in tax administration—from the collection of individualized knowledge about enterprises through intimate and often conflictual interactions between tax administrators and taxpayers, to the acquisition of global knowledge on industries through big data and arm's length management. Contrary to conventional concerns that big data and digital technologies diminish the discretion of street-level bureaucrats, this research reveals that technology unloads the burden of attaining legibility for tax collectors, while providing new space for exercising moral judgment and informal practice vis-à-vis local society. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in a county-level tax bureau in China, I demonstrate that the primary mechanism for exercising moral agency lies in negotiations between tax officers and enterprises in interpreting data results and addressing data discrepancies. Consequently, I posit that discretion persists in the era of big data, which enables the application of “good enough” moral-economic principles in tax collection, informed by bureaucrats’ social and institutional positions. Overall, this paper reflects on the unintended consequences introduced by big data in reshaping human agency and moral disposition.