Can Voluntary Tax Compliance Status Lead to Participation, Transparency and Co-operation?

Abstract

One of the aims of co-operative (voluntary) tax compliance is to introduce a co-operative relationship between the tax authority and taxpayers, promoting participation and transparency. The originality of the paper is in the fact that it is a relatively new tax approach with not many studies addressing it. Therefore,
the paper offers an academic contribution to the field of tax law, giving some interesting insights for potential development of this instrument. The purpose of the paper is to examine the perception of this instrument in real life. The paper addresses the following research question: What are the advantages and
disadvantages of acquiring voluntary compliance status in practice? Since the character of the research is exploratory, the qualitative empirical methodology based on in-depth interviews was applied on the sample of 10 interviews with tax consultants experiencing schemes of voluntary tax compliance in Slovenia.
The findings show a positive perception of the status by the taxpayers. It encourages them to establish internal tax controls, improving their business process and gaining more transparency. On the other hand, the findings show that the content of the internal controls is somehow vague and should be more clearly defined by law. Moreover, despite having a more co-operative relationship with the tax authority, taxpayers need more help on legal issues and not just on solving technical problems.