Understanding influence of tax amnesties on tax compliance and fairness perceptions of taxpayers

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the effect of tax amnesties on tax compliance decisions of taxpayers. In particular, we focused on Turkish taxpayers’ fairness perceptions and their voluntary tax compliance after the recent legislation of 6736 which is claimed to be the biggest tax amnesty (i.e. tax debt restructuring legislation) in the last decade. The paper starts with an extensive summary of the international literature, and introduces literature in Turkish. The research looks into the influence of the perception of tax amnesties on fairness and tax compliance of taxpayers while controlling for widely-discussed factors that influence tax compliance such as risk awareness and government trust. The survey was conducted with 1028 participants, and the structural model was constructed to test for the above-mentioned effects. Considering the literature is not extensive on the effect of tax amnesties on taxpayer compliance particularly in Turkey, there is a clear gap in the literature to which our research intends to contribute. It also concludes with policy suggestions. © Peter Lang GmbH.