Tax awareness and tax ethics among high school students: The example of Bingöl province

In these days, the question of "Why do people pay taxes?"has replaced the question "Why does the state charge taxes?" The main reason behind this is that taxes, which are the most important source of income of the state, become more difficult to collect fully. Nowadays especially in order to prevent the situations causing the decrease in tax revenues such as tax evasion, tax avoidance and the informal economy is important to develop tax awareness and tax ethics in taxpayers. It is a fact that an advanced society with tax consciousness and tax ethics will have a low tendency to evade taxes. In this study, Determining the belief of the tax on the necessity of the tax especially for the young people in the age of growing up will provide the opportunity to develop and take measures to new tax policies. In this study, 6.021 high school students who were studying in Bingol city center between the ages of 14 and 19, were surveyed in 2017-2018 academic year, the students' tax awareness and tax ethics levels were tried to be measured and the findings obtained as a result of the analysis were interpreted. The results of the research were evaluated and the suggestions were developed and the study was completed. The results of the research were evaluated and the suggestions were developed and the study was completed. The research was carried out using the survey method and the data obtained from the questionnaire forms were analyzed with SPSS 17.0 program. Survey of 8 questions which were prepared on a grading and grading scale and revealing demographic characteristics. In addition, it consists of 12 multiple-choice questions and 20 statements prepared according to the 5-point Likert scale, which includes tax awareness and tax ethics. For the questions and expressions included in the questionnaire, frequency analysis was performed and non-parametric tests were applied. Because the study variables were categorical and did not meet the assumption of normality, nonparametric tests were required. The non-parametric tests used in the study were Chi-Square Test, Kruskal Wallis H Test and Median Test. According to the results of the study, it was observed that the tax awareness and tax ethics of the students differed according to age, class, gender factors, and did not differ according to the parents' occupation, education level and monthly income factors. In addition, it was determined that most of the students had high level of tax awareness and tax ethics in terms of defining tax concept, tax and non-tax citizen, and point of view of tax necessity. Keyword: Tax, Tax Awareness, Tax Ethics, Taxpayer Behaviors, Bingol Province.