Reconstructing Constitutional Reasoning on Tax Matters

Abstract

This chapter constitutes a further wagon in the argumentative train of this book. Up to now, the reader has been offered (1) a description of the peculiar structure of the obligation to pay taxes in contemporary Western tax systems, (2) a normative case for assigning three basic tasks to the tax system (the collection of the revenue necessary for the provision of public goods, financing redistribution and being a tool for macroeconomic management), (3) the abstract structure of the case for the general obligation to pay taxes, on the basis of what was learnt from the structure of the case for the general obligation to obey the law. It is now the time to turn to a more empirical kind of research, and more specifically, to a reconstruction of the jurisprudence of the Spanish Constitutional Court on tax matters. Now we turn to the analysis of the sixty plus cases dealing with tax matters decided by the referred court in its almost twenty years of activity1. This will allow us to render specific the argument, by coming in touch with the peculiar problems which arise in the three dimensions of legitimacy of a tax system (i.e. political participation, substantive correctness and guaranteed implementation). At the same time, the analysis is conducted with the help of some of the conceptual and normative tools developed in the previous sections (for example, the cases are classified by reference to the three different pillars of legitimacy, and in the case of substantive correctness, taking into account the relational and absolute dimensions of such pillar).