Towards strengthening tax culture among health professionals
Keywords:
health professionalsAbstract
Introduction: healthcare professionals—physicians, dentists, nurses with independent practices, therapists, and other healthcare professionals—occupy a unique position: they are key agents of collective well-being and, at the same time, a segment with heterogeneous income patterns and high exposure to direct payments and poorly traceable transactions, conditions that can strain tax compliance in the absence of clear rules, tax education, and accessible technological tools.
Objective: to argue, based on international, regional, and local evidence, the need to strengthen tax literacy among healthcare professionals, identifying barriers and enablers, and outlining operational recommendations for areas such as Law, Public Health, Economics, Administration, and Accounting.
Development: analysis was carried out in three articulated phases: documentary review; critical-argumentative analysis; and formulation of operational proposals. The findings were integrated using a deductive-inductive approach. First, common principles and lessons learned were extracted from international and regional evidence; These recommendations were then adapted to the local reality, taking into account current regulations, billing systems, knowledge gaps, and the specificities of professional practice in offices and clinics. This phase allowed for the generation of concrete, feasible recommendations aligned with professional ethics, academic training, and public policies.
Conclusions: review of international, regional, and local evidence shows that the tax culture of healthcare professionals presents significant gaps, both in technical knowledge and in attitudes toward tax compliance. Strengthening the tax culture of this professional group is essential not only to improve collection and formalization of the sector, but also to consolidate a professional ethic oriented toward social responsibility and transparency.
Keywords: ; learning needs; tax culture; tax compliance; billing; recommendations
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Copyright (c) 2025 Luis Germán Sanandrés Álvarez, Myriam Valeria Ruiz Salgado , María Auxiliadora Falconí Tello, Sandra Patricia Jácome Tamayo
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