Gathering information in Turkish taxation law

Taxing policies of our day are observed to change especially depending on the role of the state played in the socio-economic structure. In other words the limits of taxing policies vary according to the extent of state intervention in economic life. It is also a well known fact that the level of development showed by the state significantly affects the aspects of determining tax policies. Along with the classic functions of education, health and defence, the state assumes new responsibilities in an increasing manner in line with the concept of socialstate. Due fulfilment of state assumed functions depends essentially on the public revenues derived from various sources among which taxes constitute the broadest and strongest category of all. Effectiveness in complete and timely collection of taxes is directly related to efficiency in the public service supply. Taxing systems of our century essentially depend on taxing the payers for their declared taxable income on accrual basis. However the success of this system relies on timely and complete submission of tax return information and documents to tax offices. Hence, declaration by payer requires an administrative control with respect to its completeness and correctness. Therefore in our taxing system there are several means of control on tax payers like tax office registry control, inspection, investigation and information gathering. In this study dynamics of information gathering mechanism are explored, yet information on other means of control is also provided. The study probed into the way and extent that tax authorities make use of archives during tax inspections and how the taxing intellegencia works A research was carried out on practices of information gathering and intelligencia archives throughout the process of restructuring Revenues Office. Real persons and legal entities obliged to provide information to tax authorities are studied as well as extending explanations about the penal sanctions for their wrongdoings. In the last part, the influence of information gathering mechanism is investigated with respect to tax authorities, tax payers, unrecorded economy, tax revenues as well as the problems and the implementations in various different countries.