From Society To Policy: Laypeople’s Social Representation of Tax as a Basis of Public Persuasion Strategy

The research comes recognizing a picture of the laypeople’s social representation of taxes in Indonesia. Implementing the content analysis procedure of qualitative methods, data were online collected through social media like WhatsApp, Facebook, and email. Three hundred and nine Indonesian respondents of varied demographic backgrounds participated in the study. The results present a wide variety of social representations about tax, broadly categorised into four major themes. The first theme concerns positive representations where taxes were associated with national or public interests, contributions to the state and society. In the second theme, taxes are regarded as negative, in which taxes are associated with financial or non-financial burdens, associated with complexity in tax reporting, misappropriations of state income from taxes, criticisms toward tax collecting institutions, and negative attitude towards the government and the taxes in general. In the final theme, tax represented as an obligation or responsibility. Importantly, the words that emerge as strong association with the term of tax could be used as a basis for developing message framing strategies. Indeed, the appropriate words could be selected and implemented as materials in developing a public persuasion strategy. The Directorate General of Tax (DGT) can consider it to arouse the more positive perceptual and emotional side of the society toward taxation.