Tax evasion crimes are included in Article 359 of the Tax Procedure Law. However, these crimes should be examined within the framework of the general provisions of the Turkish Penal Code, not only within the framework of Tax Procedure Law provisions. This requirement arises from both the fact that the penal provisions of the Tax Procedure Law are not sufficient in terms of penalties restricting freedom and the imperative provision of Article 5 titled as "Relationship with special laws" of the Turkish Penal Code is related to this. In this PhD thesis, the aforementioned situation has been taken into consideration and tax evasion crimes have been examined within the framework of the general provisions of the Turkish Penal Code.
In the first chapter of the thesis, the definition of tax crime and tax misdemeanor and distinction between them are provided. In addition, the historical development of tax crimes in Turkey and the regulations on tax crimes and tax penalties in some foreign countries are specified.
In the second chapter, the general provisions of the Turkish Penal Code regarding the principles of criminal responsibility are explained in general.
In the first part of the third chapter, legal basis and matter of fact of the tax evasion crimes, offender, victim, the material element and the moral element (criminal intent) and the reasons that abolish and reduce the criminal responsibility in terms of these crimes and the forms of the crime such as attempt, participation and joinder of offences are examined. In the last part of the third chapter and the thesis, some problems were determined by evaluating the implementation of the general provisions of the Turkish Penal Code to tax evasion crimes, and solutions for these problems were provided. In addition, in this chapter, judicial statistics on tax evasion crimes are compared with the taxpayer numbers and tax inspection statistics and interpreted by supporting the data with tables and graphs.