Perspectives of tax inspectors on tax amnesty practices in Turkey

A balanced budget is extremely important for ensuring economic stability. Today, the expenditures of the states are constantly increasing for various economic, social, and strategic reasons. The main source of income used by states to finance their increased expenditures is taxes. The success of taxation based on declaration depends on the tax consciousness and morality of the society. However, it is extremely important to investigate and audit the accuracy of tax returns to obtain the desired results from taxation based on the principle of declaration. To create a source of income or to facilitate the collection of accrued taxes, tax amnesties, which include different application methods, are frequently applied in Turkey. It is also known that these practices, which are put forward to provide ease of payment by giving up a part of the government's receivables for taxpayers who cannot pay their taxes due to the financing of budget deficits and the bottleneck in the economy, have social and political reasons other than economic and financial reasons. However, these practices are criticized by many segments. In this study, the opinions, suggestions, and criticisms of tax inspectors, who conduct tax inspections to investigate and determine the accuracy of the tax to be paid, on tax amnesties and application methods were investigated. Considering that the main duty of tax inspectors is to investigate the accuracy of the tax to be paid, they carry out a process that protects the rights of both the state and taxpayers. Therefore, the importance of the thoughts of tax inspectors, who carry out tax inspections between the state and taxpayers as an arbitrator, increases even more. For this reason, 10 tax inspectors were selected by criterion sampling method in the research. To determine the situation regarding tax amnesties, the case study technique, which is one of the qualitative methods, was used in the research. The participants' opinions were obtained using a semi-structured interview form consisting of eight questions. The views of the participants were analyzed with the descriptive analysis technique. As a result, it was concluded that the tax amnesties harmed tax justice and the time interval was very frequent. It has been revealed that the implementation methods of tax amnesty laws in Turkey, especially the tax base increase and the correction of business records, render the audit insignificant, and this situation negatively affects the professional motivation of the inspectors.