Trends and Clusters in Income Tax Research: A Bibliometric Study

Income tax is a very important issue for all parties involved in taxation in an economy, including politicians, academics, and taxpayers. This bibliometric analysis aims to provide an overview of income tax-related research by analyzing trends of income tax-related publications and most cited articles and article clusters. In this study, articles on income tax published in English in the Web of Science database from 1975 to 2022 were included in the research process. The VOSviewer program was used to perform co-citation analysis and cluster analysis on the included articles. Additionally, a histogram was created showing the distribution of articles according to publication years. During the research process, 2,018 articles were identified that met the inclusion criteria for the study on the subject. It is seen that approximately 44% of the studies on income tax conducted between 1975-2022 were published in the last ten years (2011-2021). As a result of common cluster analysis, six groups of articles were identified in the areas of tax policy, tax compliance, tax evasion, tax administration, taxation and business, and taxation and accounting. Studies prepared regarding tax policies rank first in terms of number of articles, average citations per article, and total number of citations. The purpose of this study present income tax research and highlight important trends and themes in the literature. The increase in publications in the last decade shows us that income tax is an important research topic. Identification of specific clusters of articles could help researchers and policymakers focus on those areas that have received less attention. Therefore, we need more research. Overall, this study provides valuable information regarding income tax research and has the potential to shed light on future research in this field.