The tax payer should not suffer the consequences of establishing wrong and unclear legislation. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Finance, which is co-responsible for the current situation, is of a different opinion.
One of the major problems that the current world is facing is the issue of so-called “agency”. It refers to the situations when we hire someone to act on our behalf and in our own interest. The problem is, that the hired person always acts in her or his own interest and not in ours. This issue has been well described within the scope of corporate management, but it doesn’t limit only to this aspect.
The same refers to the politicians and the civil servants, who we hire to run the country on our own behalf. They ought to work in our interest, but susually they focus on their own benefits. It becomes clear when it comes to making mistakes and not taking any responsibility for them. Politicians have diplomatic immunity, whereas civil servants don’t take any responsibility for their mistakes (the act on civil servants’ responsibility has not been used even once since it was passed).
At the same time the citizen and the taxpayer become responsible for the mistakes of the politicians and civil servants. Unclear law, its free and changeable interpretation and enormous fines are typical for our national fiscal system. This results in destroying many people’s life without any significant reason. If anyone is interested in examples, I kindly invite you to enter the website of Niepokonani 2012 (Eng. Invincible 2012, a civic organisation for protecting citizens from unjust decisions of administration). This also results in significant loss for our budget and economy.
The presidential project of the fiscal ordinance was supposed to improve this complex situation. The uncertainties in regulations were supposed to be nbso online casino reviews interpreted in favour of the taxpayers. In other words, the responsibility for legal errors (bungles) would lie on the national state and not on physical persons. At the same time, the budget losses would impose pressure on introducing higher quality law. The efforts of the Ministry of Finance would rely more on the enforcement of due diligence when it comes to law regulations’ formulation and not to the widening of the fiscal police authorities – it is worth mentioning that nowadays the fiscal authorities have more rights than the secret service.
The changes in legislation, suggested by the President, have been revoked by the Ministry of Finance. And what do we hear form the Ministry? “Introducing the rule of changing questionable situations in favour of the taxpayer would be a total alteration of the philosophy and is contrary to the current tax system”.
It’s devastating that the Ministry of Finance bases its functioning on the philosophy of issuing unclear legal regulations and then using the created uncertainties against us. Even more frustrating is the fact that the Ministry of Finance is not ashamed of it and states it publicly.
Thus the initiative that was supposed to revolutionize the way of establishing the law has been wasted. As long as citizens are to pay for the low quality law and not people creating them, there will be no motivation to change this pathological situation.
The article by Tomasz Kasprowicz was originally published in Polish at liberte.pl
Translation: Urszula Gałecka-Sobiech
