An empirical study on tax crime and punishment perceptions of high school students studying accounting and finance (Sakarya province sample)

The state has many sources of income, one of which is taxes, which are the most important of these sources. A state with a citizenry that has a high level of tax compliance and tax awareness will minimize potential problems in tax collection and will not experience financial difficulties. For this reason, tax perception is an important issue that needs to be addressed, but the concept of tax crimes and penalties, which is as old as taxes themselves, is also a very important issue that needs to be understood. It is important for the state to have citizens with a high level of tax crime and penalty awareness and tax compliance in order to establish an effective tax system. From this perspective, considering that vocational high school students who receive accounting and finance education in our country are more likely to become professionals or taxpayers in the future compared to other students, it is important to understand how these students perceive tax crimes and penalties, as they will play an active and significant role in the tax process. With this study, it is aimed to reveal how students studying accounting and finance perceive tax crimes and penalties and to make suggestions on what can be done to increase this perception level. In the research, clustering-based selection was made with the purposeful sampling method within the trade vocational high schools in Sakarya province with the pilot application method. Certain clusters were selected according to the criteria determined by the researcher. A face-to-face survey was conducted in 5 schools and 320 students and tests and analyzes were conducted with SPSS 29.0 analysis program. In the results, it was seen that the perception levels of the students were at medium level and high tendency, but although they were educated in the field where the earliest tax education was given in our country, it was seen that they were unfamiliar with some concepts related to tax and that there were some problems arising from this and that the main reason for these problems was the insufficiency of tax education. It is seen that most of the problems identified by the test and analysis results are due to the lack of information they experience, even if they are students who receive education in the field of accounting and finance. It has been concluded that the solution proposals brought by the study to the problems in this regard can be raised to higher levels with extra courses and activities to be added to the tax-related curriculum of these students with a high perception of tax crime and punishment.