Huge bugdet deficits realised by the Turkish economy in recent years fostered more discussions on the performance of tax administration and tax revenue losses. Tax structures have been discussed within two main approaches: economic/institutional structure and political behaviour. This study aims at evaluating the municipal-based tax revenues in Turkey by the economic/institutional factors. the cross-section analysis shows that the tax efforts depend highly on the municipalities' level of economic development, consistent with the theoretical expectations. Apart from the significant elements of the tax system, it is also shown that unrecorded incomes are responsible for a major part of the tax revenue losses. Despite that the tax system establsihed by the central goverment cannot be evaluated in terms of the local political behaviours, it would not be unrealistic to interpret some of the significant results as the incentives given to some groups of voters as a vehicle of seeking political rent.
Key words: na Article Language: EnglishTurkish
| 
