Representing a client before the Supreme Administrative Court, especially in tax cases, can be a source of surprise. It is common knowledge that tax regulations are unclear, they are interpreted in different ways by tax authorities and by administrative courts.
As a rule, we question the manner in which these regulations are applied in the decisions of tax authorities in our complaints, subjecting such regulations to different types of legal interpretation. If, despite this, the results of the interpretation are not obvious, all we can do is refer to the concept of “reasonable legislator”.
In one of the cases, I argued that the reasonable legislator would not accept a result as absurd as the one that the tax authorities have arrived at. Then one of the judges from the adjudicating panel spoke up: ‘Reasonableness of the legislator is REBUTTABLE’.
Not only did this phrase come into my practice, but I also no longer use the “reasonable legislator” argument.
