Konstytucyjne podstawy stanowienia prawa podatkowego w Polsce

Abstract

The role of the Constitution in taxation should be analyzed from the perspective of its place in the system of law, as an act at the top of the legal acts’ hierarchy, as well as from the perspective of the specifics of tax law, or even broader, specifics of public finances. The state’s intervention in the property relations through tax imposition has to have its constitutional basis. Influence of the constitutional provisions on the tax law making in Poland has been chosen as a subject of the present article. There are three key constitutional provisions related to the issue: art. 84 – „Everyone shall comply with his responsibilities and public duties, including the payment of taxes, as specified by statute”. art. 168 – “To the extent established by statute, units of local government shall have the right to set the level of local taxes and charges”.art. 217 – The imposition of taxes, as well as other public imposts, the speci fication of those subject to the tax and the rates of taxation, as well as the principles for granting tax relieves and remissions, along with categories of taxpayers exempt from taxation, shall be by means of statute”.The above presented regulations are subject of deliberations, it should be noted however, that a number of requirements for the tax law enactment in Poland have been derived by interpretation, from other constitutional provisions or their conglomerations. The jurisdiction of the Constitution Tribunal should be taken into account in this regards, established based on the art. 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Series of principles (which are not expressis verbis given) have been brought out from this provision including tax law fundamental principles: certainty, non–retroactivity of law, prohibition of introducing changes to tax law during tax year, tax fairness and equality of subjects. Given the frames of the present publication, those rules are left outside the scope of deliberations. The publication deals only with so called normative direct principles, that is principles resulting straight from the particular provision of the Constitution. They include, in accordance with their presentation throughout the text: principle of the public authority’s exclusivity in tax imposition, principle of statutory regulation of the tax construction’s elements and principle of limited tax power of the territorial local government.