34. International Public Finance Conference
The Right to Good Administration in Tax Inspection Process
Nuray Aşcı AkıncıThe right to good administration, which is one of the significant features in the scope of administration field of a contemporary rule of law, particularly requires certain qualities such as impartiality, transparency, proportionality, prohibition of discrimination, right to access information, right to be heard, right of defense, right to a fair trial within reasonable time and justification of decisions. The right to good administration constitutes the legal assurance of individuals who are relatively weak against the state which is equipped with the privileges of the public power. These assurances are also applied to tax law practices. The specific principles and requirements of the right to good administration should also be considered during the tax inspection process. This study herein assesses “tax inspection”, which is a technical tax law institution, under the light of requirements of the right to good administration. This study further includes the normative foundations of the right to good administration under international and national law and explains the assurance mechanism in the scope of this right along with the functions of such mechanisms. Subsequently, it discusses the process and institutional structure of the tax inspection which is one of the audit mechanisms for the taxpayer under Turkish tax law. Then, the legal and administrative regulations made in the relevant tax legislation with regards to the right to good administration are briefly examined. In this context, the individual application decision by the Constitutional Court which was published in March, 2018 (Application No: 2015/6728) was evaluated here as a remarkable example of how the existing regulations can be applied differently in similar concrete cases and how they can give rise to different results in terms of obligations during the tax audit processes.