Introduction
Tax is a financial burden that individuals have to bear as a result of an administrative act carried out by the tax administration, which has the public power regarding taxation.
Although 24.1% of taxpayers consider taxation a sacred duty (Qoban et al. 2004), the European Commission of Human Rights says, any law involving some form of financial liability includes depriving the person of his/her possessions as much as the amount that needs to be paid from the respective assets” (Yalti 2006). By this, it states that the taxation process is the result of deprivation of property as much as the part that causes a decrease in the assets and may constitute an intervention to the property right. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), on the other hand, stated that it acknowledged the case law of European Commission of Human Rights, saying, “that taxation as an intervention to the rights to give assurance in Article 1 of the Protocol” (Yalti 2006).Taxes can be called an administrative act, a sacred duty or an interference with the right to property, and there are many other definitions of taxes. Many of these definitions ignore the fact that taxes are a social event. No matter for what legal or religious reason we rationalize taxes; tax is an economic burden on those exposed to it. In many cases, taxpayers try to reduce the tax they will bear, and some different taxpayers fulfil their tax duties in a timely and complete manner, even if they will face severe economic consequences.
The views that prioritize the socio-psychological aspect of taxes (Saglam 2013) come to the fore when trying to explain the reason for these two opposite reactions. Research on tax psychology is mainly conducted to understand why taxpayers react differently to tax. In these studies, sometimes a group of taxpayers are dealt with, and sometimes it is tried to understand why the tax efforts of countries differ. Most studies show us the difference between taxpayers or countries is directly related to tax compliance or tax perception of taxpayers.
Tax perception is an important factor affecting tax compliance and, accordingly, tax revenue. In cases where the tax perception is negative, tax compliance decreases and this causes reactions such as tax avoidance or, in more advanced cases, tax evasion. In a crisis, such as the pandemic, when public expenditures are expected to increase, taxpayer compliance will be much more important in collecting taxes that will finance these expenditures. It is known that there are many variables that affect tax perception. In this study, it will be tried to determine how the tax perception is affected by a global crisis, namely pandemic.
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