Interaction between Tax Culture and Tax Policies: An Assessment of Turkey Tax is the most important source of funding that constitutes and affects the government revenues. Tax culture includes a binary feature: “taxation” and “paying...
moreInteraction between Tax Culture and Tax Policies: An Assessment of Turkey Tax is the most important source of funding that constitutes and affects the government revenues. Tax culture includes a binary feature: “taxation” and “paying taxes.” The binary feature, tax ethics, state-individual relations and tax justice are the constituent elements of tax culture. The importance of tax culture has increased in the recent years and increasing tax culture has been a significant policy tool. This study aims to examine the interaction between tax policies in practice and tax culture and evaluates the improvement of tax culture in the years between 2002 and 2010 in Turkey. It is concluded that the policies to increase tax culture were implemented in this period; however, no sufficient progress was made. Taxes are the prime source for the public spending of the government. Taxation involves a long process starting from the preparation of legislative proposals and/or draft law to the tax payment of taxpayers. The parties to taxation are in interaction with each other in this process. Tax is a phenomenon where very broad and comprehensive as well as complex decision-making processes are managed. The government brings together the individuals, who are citizens in political terms, and the enterprises, which are established for the purpose of making a profit, forms the entities such as action-reaction or/and heterogeneous massification by using different decisions and behaviour patterns taken under diverse conditions, and triggers new decision-making processes under new conditions. These processes are shaped by the parties to taxation and these parties are the main determinants that form and influence tax culture. The relationship between the government and taxpayers is considered as a psychological contract/relationship, which entails strong emotional bonds and loyalty. It is the cooperation which is to be fulfilled in the psychological contract and trust has an important role in this relationship. The subject of the study is the impacts of the state policies, which are among the main determinants of tax culture, have a decision-maker role in tax process and act as a decisive in the formation of such process, on the formation of tax culture. In this sense, the elements constituting tax culture (tax ethics, state-individual relations and tax justice) are discussed and the tax policies implemented in Turkey in the near past and the period of the latest political power (2002- 2010) are evaluated. Consequently, the study attempts to reveal the impacts of such policies on tax culture through descriptive survey model. In this regard, it is considered necessary to explain certain concepts on the subject.
