Abstract:

Although each new administration claims to craft its own budget, in reality, spending plans always follow the choices made by its predecessors. To evaluate how much of a country's current budget is allocated to projects that do not need congressional approval or, more technically, to mandated expenditure programs, the fiscal democracy index was created. The Fiscal Democracy Index is calculated by subtracting mandatory spending and debt interest from total government revenues. The number reflects the amount of money left over from taxes that can be used for discretionary government programs. The ratio of the remaining public revenues to the total public revenues is the fiscal democracy indicator. Yet, tax expenditures may occur at any time during the fiscal year. Tax expenditures, on the other hand, are not always held to the same standards of transparency and accountability as other types of government spending. In this study, which aims to examine fiscal democracy in Turkey by deeming the impact of tax expenditures, we observed that Turkey's fiscal democracy index might be higher when considering tax expenditures. As a result, reducing tax expenditures will increase fiscal democracy.

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