Causes of the reduction and elimination of tax liabilities and tax penalties at Turkish Tax Laws: Tax amnesty practice

In today?s world, increasing public needs have increased the variety of the public services provided by the government and hence given rise to public expenditures. As a result of the requirement for covering the growing public expenditures a continuous source of financing has been mandated. The most significant source of financing used by a government in order to sustain its operations and render the public services is the taxation. The government, supplies a significant portion of financial resources used to cover the public expenditures for fulfilling its responsibilities and obligations against the society from the tax income. Tax is defined as the nonrefundable obligatory payments collected from the individuals living within the borders of the governments based on laws and regulations. At one hand of the tax relationship there is the government as the creditor and on the other hand there is the taxpayer as the debtor. Since the most significant source of income for the government consists of taxes termination of this relationship timely and properly plays a critical role. In some cases, individuals may become subject to certain implications if they do not fulfill this responsibility of theirs. These implications which a government applies to responsible parties for violating the rules it mandates are called as tax penalties. The most ordinary way of ending the creditor/debtor relationship between the taxpayers and the government is to pay the tax liability and the tax penalties with the methods outlined by the laws and regulations. However, in some cases where legal conditions come to existence, other than the payment, through certain clauses like, statute of limitations, negotiation, attrition, revision, correction of the mistakes, elimination, reduction of the penalties, being mistaken, death and amnesty, tax liability and penalties are eliminated. Position of the taxes being the most important source of income for the government it becomes critical to study the ways of ending this creditor/debtor relationship which derives from the tax obligations. For this reason in this study it has been targeted to explain the ways eliminating the tax obligations and tax penalties in detail and tax amnesties which have become a major subject of discussion among and drawing the attention of the public during the years they have been employed in our country have been emphasized. Keywords: Tax Liability, Tax Receivable, Tax Penalty, Tax Amnesty