Abstract:

This study aims to understand the meaning of a tax from the taxpayer’s perspective. The importance of reviewing the tax concept from the taxpayer's perspective is to gain an understanding of tax-related matters. The results of this study are expected to increase public literacy regarding the meaning of taxes in social and state life. This study used an interpretive paradigm with Husserl's transcendental phenomenology as an analytical tool. The object of this research was academics, all of whom had the status of taxpayers, and as many as four people were selected as research informants. In the data collection process, researchers used interview, observation, and documentation methods. First, taxation can be studied from a narrow perspective, namely a perspective based on individualist and limited collectivist interests. Second, taxation can be studied from a more comprehensive, long-term and broad-minded perspective. These two perspectives have different implications for taxing related  attitudes and behavior.