{"title":"Regulatory impact assessments (Ria) As an input in tax law interpretation: Analysis of the administrative courts verdicts","authors":"D. Gajewski, Kamil Joński","doi":"10.4467/22996834flr.22.023.17192","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The goal of this paper is to empirically examine the role of Regulatory Impact Assessments (RIAs) accompanying draft laws submitted by the Council of the Ministers as an input in purpose-oriented interpretation of tax law, carried out by Polish Administrative Courts. To this end, full-text database of the universe of Administrative Courts verdicts (CBOIS) had been queried in order to uncover all court decisions issued from Jan 1st 2001 to Dec 31st 2022 and mentioning RIAs in their written motives. All in all 14 decisions of SAC and 39 decisions of FIACs had been located – the result that can be interpreted as an evidence of scant use of RIA as an input for statutory interpretation of the tax law. Qualitative analysis reported in the paper illustrates what sort of information had been recovered by justices from RIA. Results suggest that potential offered by RIA’s coverage of ‘lawmaker’s intent’ is still not fully utilized in the process of tax law interpretation. However, any reliance on this sort of documents have to be accompanied with critical analysis of their quality and role in lawmaking process. Conditional forecasts (what impact is reasonably expected) should not be mistaken with statements of the intent (what impact is desired). Moreover, perfunctory RIA, prepared as part of window-dressing exercise, not genuine analysis underpinning the decision-making process, could turned out misleading.","PeriodicalId":54052,"journal":{"name":"European Company and Financial Law Review","volume":"154 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Company and Financial Law Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.4467/22996834flr.22.023.17192","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The goal of this paper is to empirically examine the role of Regulatory Impact Assessments (RIAs) accompanying draft laws submitted by the Council of the Ministers as an input in purpose-oriented interpretation of tax law, carried out by Polish Administrative Courts. To this end, full-text database of the universe of Administrative Courts verdicts (CBOIS) had been queried in order to uncover all court decisions issued from Jan 1st 2001 to Dec 31st 2022 and mentioning RIAs in their written motives. All in all 14 decisions of SAC and 39 decisions of FIACs had been located – the result that can be interpreted as an evidence of scant use of RIA as an input for statutory interpretation of the tax law. Qualitative analysis reported in the paper illustrates what sort of information had been recovered by justices from RIA. Results suggest that potential offered by RIA’s coverage of ‘lawmaker’s intent’ is still not fully utilized in the process of tax law interpretation. However, any reliance on this sort of documents have to be accompanied with critical analysis of their quality and role in lawmaking process. Conditional forecasts (what impact is reasonably expected) should not be mistaken with statements of the intent (what impact is desired). Moreover, perfunctory RIA, prepared as part of window-dressing exercise, not genuine analysis underpinning the decision-making process, could turned out misleading.
期刊介绍:
In legislation and in case law, European law has become a steadily more dominant factor in determining national European company laws. The “European Company”, the forthcoming “European Private Company” as well as the Regulation on the Application of International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS Regulation”) have accelerated this development even more. The discussion, however, is still mired in individual nations. This is true for the academic field and – even still – for many practitioners. The journal intends to overcome this handicap by sparking a debate across Europe on drafting and application of European company law. It integrates the European company law component previously published as part of the Zeitschrift für Unternehmens- und Gesellschaftsrecht (ZGR), on of the leading German law reviews specialized in the field of company and capital market law. It aims at universities, law makers on both the European and national levels, courts, lawyers, banks and other financial service institutions, in house counsels, accountants and notaries who draft or work with European company law. The journal focuses on all areas of European company law and the financing of companies and business entities. This includes the law of capital markets as well as the law of accounting and auditing and company law related issues of insolvency law. Finally it serves as a platform for the discussion of theoretical questions such as the economic analysis of company law. It consists of articles and case notes on both decisions of the European courts as well as of national courts insofar as they have implications on European company law.