The Role of Administrative Measures in Detecting Tax Evasion (Using Tax Sticker as a Model)

Abstract

Taxes are considered the main resource for most state budgets, as a decline in tax collection affects the financing of increasing public expenditure. However, the tax system faces a fundamental challenge in performing this function, which is the phenomenon of tax evasion. This phenomenon is aggravation in many developing economies, including Syria, causing multi-dimensional negative effects on financial, economic, and social levels. Therefore, all countries' laws penalize tax evasion due to the waste of revenue it causes to the public treasury.

Tax evasion is attributed to multiple reasons, all of all of them are poured into to accumulating money through illicit means, such as the taxpayer's feeling of a high tax burden, outdated and conflicting tax legislation, the weakness and

inefficiency of the tax evasion control apparatus, the absence of an economic aspect in the performance of financial departments, and prioritizing collection over other functions... etc.

Syrian statistical data indicate that the average tax burden during the period (2000–2021) did not exceed 8.24%, which is a modest percentage compared to Arab and global averages, reflecting a large tax gap attributed to the widening scope of tax evasion.

Addressing this problem is typically done through tax legislation and the penalties it includes for perpetrators of tax evasion crimes. Additionally, administrative procedures carried out by the tax administration to verify the extent of declared tax compliance can help. However, despite this, curbing tax evasion requires more advanced methods related to cooperation between the tax administration and the public.

This research aims to bring into focus on the pivotal role of administrative procedures, both traditional and innovative, in detecting and reducing tax evasion, focusing particularly on the model of the "Tax Sticker" as a new, innovative, visual, and simplified method. It combines transparency and community

Oversight to detect tax evasion and reduce it, unlike many procedures and studies that have focused on combating it through inspection tours, examining and auditing data, documents, and other procedures. This is because good reform first requires identifying the problem or phenomenon, which is what the idea of the sticker does.