Tax Confidentiality as a Limitation in the Procedure for Public Control of the State of Public Finances

Abstract

Any control, regardless of the field to which it relates, requires information. This claim is also valid in the field of citizen’s control. For an individual to be able to effectively assess what is going on around him or her and make sound decisions on that basis, he or she must be able to obtain a variety of information, including, above all, information that is comprehensive public knowledge. According to what follows from the regulations of the Act of 6 September 2001 on access to public information, their catalogue is broad and, more importantly, open. Although on the surface it might seem that the individual does not need anything more, it should not be forgotten that the same legislator determines a number of restrictions that block or completely close the way to certain pieces of public information. This group of statutory restrictions includes tax confidentiality as defined by the Tax Ordinance Act of 29 August 1997. The main objective of the considerations undertaken in this article is to determine to what extent tax confidentiality by its very nature restricts the process of public scrutiny of the state of public finances, taking into account its subjective and objective scope and its positioning among all the premises limiting accessibility to public knowledge.