Document Type : Research Article
Author
Associate Professor, Department of Law, , Faculty of law, political science and history, Yazd university, Yazd, Iran.
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to explore the mindset and behaviors of attorneys at law regarding their obligation to pay taxes to the government. As defenders of the law, how do attorneys behave when faced with tax regulations? How might they utilize legal foundations and statutory strategies to prevent governmental tax collection? And what are the consequences of such behaviors? This study employs the Grounded Theory method to answer the above questions. In this regard, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 attorneys at law in Yazd Province during the year 2023. Following open coding, 433 concepts were identified. Subsequently, based on the similarities and differences among these concepts, they were categorized into 84 sub-categories. In the next stage, to outline the research paradigm, 13 main categories were extracted from the aforementioned categories. The challenge of governmental tax collection was considered the central phenomenon (main problem) of the research. The causes of this central phenomenon, such as the delegitimization of the government, along with the strategies employed by attorneys—such as seeking exemptions—and the resulting consequences, like legal formalism, revealed that "instrumentalization of the law against tax collection" is the core category that connects all obtained concepts and categories. The results of the research indicate that the government's lack of regulation in the realm of tax collection coincides with a form of lawlessness on the part of attorneys. On the one hand, the government lacks rule-based order, and on the other hand, attorneys tend to instrumentally use the law to avoid paying taxes. Such a cycle leads to the reproduction of the tax collection challenge in Iran.
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