How Taxpayers React to Tax Increase? A Qualitative Analysis on Motivational Factors towards Tax Increases on Social Media

Abstract

In this study, in order to research taxpayer’s motivations towards tax increase some of the concepts which affect taxpayers’ reactions of taxation like tax justice, government trust, corruption perception, satisfaction of public services, splurge, patriotism, tax amnesty influence, taxpayers’ income, education level, perception of tax administration, justification and opportunism is created as a conceptual framework. In order to create a framework that guides us to understand taxpayer reactions to a tax increase, we took an opportunity of 2017 changes of the tax system in motor vehicle tax and the increase of the third bracket of personal income that caused an unprecedented social reaction over social media and press. We focused on the social media reactions that posted on Twitter, one of the most used social media platforms in Turkey, and gathered data from trending topics during the period of 27th of September 2017 and 14th of October 2017. We gathered 20.984 tweets from eleven trending topics. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis. Findings of the analysis showed that government trust is the most common motivation behind reactions and it is followed by tax burden concerns. This research has a unique contribution to the literature as it is the first attempt to categories social media reactions over a tax increase in the Turkish context and it also contributes to international literature.

Keywords

• Motor Vehicle Tax
• Income Tax
• Turkey
• Qualitative Analysis