The Evaluation of Turkish Tax System and European Union Tax System in Terms of Direct Taxes

As European Union is a politic-economic union and one of the shared competence of the member states is economic cohesion, the union policies in terms of economy are required some regulations through a common alignment on behalf of member states. One of the ways through cohesion is coordination on tax policy strategies of European countries. The tax policy in EU consists of two components, direct taxation, which remains the sole responsibility of member states, and indirect taxation, which affects free movement of goods and the freedom to provide services. Even though the indirect taxes are mostly needed to a common cohesion between member countries, a need for coordination on direct taxation has recently occured as well. The aim of this study is to clarify EU’s sanctions on direct taxation through a common cohesion within the member states, and to evaluate the regulations constructed through EU policies on direct taxation in Turkey as a candidate member state. In this study, it is concluded that the EU policy on direct taxation is mostly concerned about the income and corporate taxes; and Turkey as a candidate member constitutes new regulations based on EU sanctions on taxation policy.