Beyond enforcement: tax audits as social signals of fear, trust, and fiscal legitimacy in digital public discourse

Tax audits are conventionally understood as enforcement mechanisms intended to promote compliance through deterrence. This study examines how audits acquire broader social meanings in digital public discourse, how audit-related fear is constructed and circulated, and how these narratives relate to trust in tax authorities. Using interpretive netnography, the study analysed 327 complete discussion threads, including 1,124 comments and replies, together with visual materials from publicly accessible discussions on X and Instagram. Data were examined through an iterative and theoretically informed thematic process combining initial coding, category development, and thematic integration. Findings show that audits were frequently represented through meanings associated with threat, punishment, and institutional scrutiny. Importantly, audit-related fear was also articulated without direct audit experience, revealing a vicarious dimension of fear associated with circulating narratives and procedural uncertainty. Trust was heterogeneous and context-dependent, with substantial ambivalence alongside trust erosion, conditional trust, and less frequent trust-building narratives. By conceptualising tax audits as trust-relevant social signals and digital public discourse as an interpretive arena, the study extends the Slippery Slope Framework and highlights the social–discursive processes through which institutional power, fear, and trust are negotiated in digital environments.