The Politics of Retirement Savings Taxation: A Trans-Tasman Perspective and Sugar, Rum and Tobacco: Taxes and public health in New Zealand.Prof Lisa Marriott of the School of Accounting and Commercial Law at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and extraordinary professor in UP’s Department of Taxation Prof Chris Evans of the University of New South Wales, Australia, visited the University of Pretoria at the end of 2017, contributing immensely towards research capacity building in the Department.  

 

Prof Evans (third from right) and Prof Marriott (second from right)

 

Prof Marriott was the guest speaker at a Brown Bag session of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, where she discussed the topic ‘Survey design and application: Using the survey method to study attitudes’. She discussed how surveys are an effective method of collecting data on human populations where the aim is to learn more about the demographic characteristics, behaviours or attitudes of a population. Her presentation examined the use of the survey method for collecting data and covered survey design and planning, sampling and data collection. In addition, the presentation outlined a large-scale survey that was administered in New Zealand and Australia. This survey had 3 000 respondents and 80 questions, with a mix of question types including open-ended questions, dichotomous questions, unordered response categories and rating scales. The advantages and pitfalls of using surveys was also considered.

 

Head of the Department of Taxation Prof Theuns Steyn with Prof Lisa Marriott at the Brown Bag session

 

Prof Marriott teaches taxation at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her research interests include social justice and inequality with a particular interest in the behavioural impacts of taxation. She has publications in a range of refereed journals and is the author of two books, namely The Politics of Retirement Savings Taxation: A Trans-Tasman Perspective and Sugar, Rum and Tobacco: Taxes and public health in New Zealand.

 

Her work is interdisciplinary, covering disciplines including sociology, political science and public policy. In 2013, she was awarded a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grant to investigate the different treatments of tax evasion and welfare fraud in the New Zealand justice system. She has worked in the private sector in the United Kingdom and in the public sector in New Zealand and has worked in academia for the past ten years.