Tax collector as a ‘street level bureaucrat’: Property tax, low-income housing, and urban governance in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Dr. Shreyashi Dasgupta, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool

Friday 18th November 2022, 1 to 2.30pm

Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Rendall Building

Cities continue to rely on property taxes as an important measure for economic growth, building revenue, and financing municipal services. The understanding of ‘property’ in cities of the Global South can be varied given the complicated land ownership and the paradoxical typologies of low-income housing that are often hard to classify. In this talk, I will discuss how are properties defined, on what basis is the tax collected and under what conditions? Based on interviews with revenue officials including the tax collector, this talk revisits Lipsky’s (1971) concept of a ‘street level bureaucrat’ to understand routine decision-making processes in Dhaka’s rental accommodations. In doing so, it engages with debates on the practice of governance, the blurred formal and informal nature of tax collection, speculative strategies of enforcement, and the role of the everyday state.

Part of the Seminar Series “Transformations in Land, Labour, and Meaning” organised by the Power, Space, and Cultural Change Cluster, Department of Geography and Planning.