By exploring how the taxation of sex work is interpreted and explained, this article aims to expand theoretical and empirical understandings of tax imaginaries – the collectively formed meanings ascribed to taxes, taxpaying, and the purposes they serve – and how gender is mobilised in their construction. It argues that tax imaginaries created and circulated through online expert commentaries on the taxation of prostitution in Italy discredit sex workers through well-established stigmatising gendered tropes, trivialise the predicaments that they face as taxpayers, and ignore or dismiss systemic ambiguities and discriminations that disadvantage sex workers as citizens. Old prejudices against sex workers are thus reinforced and new ones constituted through these tax imaginaries, while the social inequality and marginalisation experienced by sex workers is obscured.

通过探讨如何解释和解释对性工作的税收，本文旨在扩大对税收想象的理论和实证理解——税收、纳税及其服务目的的集体形成的意义——以及性别如何在其构建中动员起来。它认为，通过在线专家对意大利卖淫征税的评论创建和传播的税收想象通过既定的污名化性别比喻来抹黑性工作者，淡化他们作为纳税人所面临的困境，并忽视或忽视对性别不利的系统性模糊和歧视工人作为公民。因此，对性工作者的旧有偏见被强化，而新的偏见则通过这些税收想象而形成，而性工作者所经历的社会不平等和边缘化却被掩盖了。