Protection of Rights of Taxpayers That Are Not Defined as Physical Persons in Poland

Abstract

Taxpayers, who are not physical persons, mostly use an institution of the Ombudsman or they file a constitutional complaint to Constitutional Tribunal in Poland. Their professional preparation and greater financial strength result in ousting of physical persons – as entities without the satisfactory support of legal advisors – from competition in access to the protection of their rights by the Ombudsman. The problems rather originate from the unsatisfactory level of financing of Polish Ombudsman. Thus, the Ombudsman would avoid commissioning external expert’s report and legal opinions and instead would prefer to focus on applications, in which requesting entities provide such documents on their own. In case of the constitutional complaint, the basic difficulty is a lack of professionalism of (surely cheaper) legal counselors and lawyers who serve physical persons. Lately, some works have been initiated to establish a new institution to protect taxpayers’ rights – Ombudsman of Taxpayers’ Rights. This signalized change is expected to be rather quantitative than qualitative – a new organ is going to double functions of the classical ombudsman.