Concordance of General Clauses in Tax Law

Abstract

Pursuant to their constitutional model, general clauses protect, in the most general terms, the interest: general, universal or the interest or good of an individual. Unfortunately, this clear and evident categorisation of general clauses is absent in the tax law regulations. The aim of this article is to present an exhaustive catalogue of such indeterminate expressions, encoded in the specific provisions of the general and particular tax law. The study also aims to demonstrate the problems related to the interpretation of such expressions in the process of applying the law. It should be stressed that the diversity of tax law general clauses results in problems with their unambiguous interpretation. A correct interpretation of the scope of meaning of the given general clause requires advanced knowledge on the part of the interpreter, since in tax law, the same-sounding clauses, which operate in different legal acts, refer to distinct extralegal domains. For these reasons the interpretation of such indeterminate expressions should never be limited only to a superficial, semantic (dictionary-level) explanation of the meaning of particular words.