Taxpayer rights in Turkey: A survey on income taxpayers in Manisa
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Date
2012
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Abstract
Declaration of taxpayers' rights is considerably new trend which has appeared on the literature from the beginning of 1990s (Duncan,1998). Furthermore, the concept of taxpayer rights is trying to pull taxpaying behaviour from obligatory base to voluntarily base by raising awareness on citizenship by using taxpayer rights which recognized on the constitution and law. Therefore, governments are trying to create an environment to solve their taxation problems more efficiently by establishing reliable and stable links between revenue administration and taxpayers. Many countries have declared elaborated taxpayers' rights in a form of Taxpayers' Charter or Bill of rights and although they have been analysed in the literature, some countries still have not touched on such as Turkey. Turkey is a very promising area in the international literature and differs from many countries as a result of its population, historical roots, demographical specialties and growing economic strength. Moreover, in last decades importance of Turkey has became more observable. Especially, EU integration process and being the 16th biggest economy in the world by achieving the biggest growth rates among European countries in recent years drew attention from many academic circles. Furthermore, Turkey has a modern tax system and organised revenue administration which has became independent from ministry of finance at 2005 as a result of EU integration process. Moreover, in March 2006 Turkish Revenue administration has declared Taxpayers' bill of rights and established taxpayer rights and services directorships under 29 big cities' tax offices in Turkey. This paper aims to give a concise background information about taxpayers' rights in Turkey. Furthermore, it introduces Turkish literature about taxpayer rights and compares main aspects of taxpayer rights in Turkey with some other OECD countries. More importantly, findings of an empirical work are introduced for the first time about taxpayer rights in Turkey. A survey has been conducted in Manisa district, a western city of Turkey, among 291 income taxpayers to measure their response to taxpayer rights and paper analysed their awareness and understanding level of it. Lastly, the paper will be finalised with some conclusion remarks.