The Level of Tax Complexity: A Comparative Analysis Between the U.K. and Turkey Based on the OTS Index

• Published in: International Tax Journal Vol. 44; no. 1; pp. 23 - 36
• Main Authors: Budak, Tamer, James, Simon
• Format: Journal Article Trade Publication Article
• Language: English
• Published: Riverwoods CCH, Inc 01-01-2018; CCH INCORPORATED
• Subjects: Comparative analysis; Compliance; Costs; Efficiency; Income taxes; Law; Legislation; Personal income; Simplification; Tax administration; Tax assessments; Tax reform; Taxation; Washington DC; Turkey; United Kingdom > UK; United States > US
• ISSN: 0097-7314

By reducing these costs, simplification can also reduce the whole burden of taxation.18 At the same time, a simple tax system increases transparency and reduces number of points of contact between businesses and tax authorities. [...]there are several advantages of a simple tax system and they may be summarised as lower administrative costs, lower compliance costs, fewer errors, fewer economic distortions and more transparency and accountability. According to the tax guillotine, each tax or mandatory contribution must meet four main criteria: * It must be legal: it is clearly set by law and does not violate any higher-level legislation. * It must be essential or policy-driven: OTS released the latest version of tax complexity index on June 2015 as a table.82 The index became more complex itself. Because the tax system has been broken down into 111 areas, divided by function such as corporate tax, some taxes such as aggregates levy are presented as a single whole. [...]all indicators should be objective and accessible to users and researchers and methods have to be devised to develop indicators that enable meaningful comparisons to be made.