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Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p16552"

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  • Piirainen, Antti-Juhani (2018)
    This study provides an analysis on the role of communications in enhancing tax compliance from building an overall view of OECD’s Forum of Tax Administration’s member countries’ tax administrations’ perceptions about communications’ role on improving tax compliance. Prior to this study, there was no comprehensive view about the state of communications in the aforementioned countries. This study examines the perceptions of tax administration communications departments on whether tax compliance can be improved by means of communication. In the recent tax-related theories, there are two ways of encouraging the payment of taxes: coercive power and trust. According to theories, trust can be increased by the transparency that modern government communication is nowadays very much aimed towards. The tax communication units of OECD’s Forum of Tax Administrations' member countries' tax administrations were viewed in regards of organisational factors, communication practices and strategic approaches. This study has been carried out as a quantitative observational study targeting the members of the aforementioned network. An online survey was used to collect the data and was sent to the member countries in 2017 and 2018. This way it was possible to gain further insight with the year-by-year comparison. In addition, the data obtained through the survey was compared to other materials such as the OECD's Tax Administration Series. Key concepts and theories are related to tax compliance, government communication as well as transparency and trust. One of the key findings of the study is that the size of the tax administrations does not have impact on communications departments’ perceptions or activities on enhancing tax compliance with communications. Seems that tax administrations have not been able to leverage the economics of scale communications-wise. All of the tax administrations perceived their communications to be successful despite the variance in their actual performance within strategic goals, usage of different media channels or monitoring their performance. However, tax administrations’ attitudes towards transparency have moved in a positive direction within one year. According to the results, communication measurements are underutilised, as they could be reflected more with the goals and directions of communication strategies. The link between strategic objectives and practice is broken, despite the fact that tax administrations use a wide range of different service channels, marketing communicational tools as well as social networks when communicating towards tax payers and stakeholders. With this in mind, it can be said that on a general level, tax administrations are well prepared for the challenges of the new information age and its pressures for more transparency, but do not necessarily have the optimal organisational setting for it yet.