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References to "customers‟ have become commonplace in the policy discourses within UK government and other public sector bodies. It is a working assumption of UK public sector management that the concept of the "customer‟ can be applied to any public sector service agency or department; this paper analyses how the UK government‟s revenue department, formerly titled the Inland Revenue (IR), re-characterised firstly taxpayers and latterly tax claimants as "customers," rather than "users," of IR services. This paper identifies some problems, dilemmas and ambiguities associated with this reconceptualisation in the context of an organisation that is predominantly a regulating department. Far from being merely a reclassification of the taxpayer as customer, the emerging discourse and associated practices of the IR were in part embedded in organisational change including the merger with HM Customs and Excise to form the present-day HMRC. Thus, this case analysis illustrates the limits of consumerism as a strategic tool of a government revenue department and raises wider questions for public management.

This paper constructs a method for assessing the degree of connection between tax rules and practices and financial reporting rules and practices in a country. Five types of connection and disconnection are suggested, and 15 arenas of accounting are proposed for assessment on this basis. The method is applied to four countries, partly in order to test the claim of a clear distinction between Anglo-Saxon and continental European countries.