Tax agent ad litem's impact on estate and gift tax cases of administrative litigation

Abstract

Abstract Article 241-1 of the Administrative Litigation Act, introducing the compulsory requirement of an agent ad litem which must be a lawyer or an accountant for cases submitted to the Supreme Administrative Court in the appellate procedure, was promulgated by the President May 25, 2011, and came into force September 16, 2012, moving the administrative litigation system one step further. Academicians and practice experts rarely do relevant research into the effectiveness of the Article. Because tax litigation cases make up the majority of the cases in the court, we use administrative litigation cases related to estate and gift taxes which were heard in the Supreme Administrative Court during the period 2009–2015 as samples to analyze the impact of the Article on litigation effectiveness. The results show that the use of an agent ad litem has shortened the duration of the ligation process since the Article was enacted, which is different from previous research where cases with an agent ad litem lasted longer and the agent ad litem could not prevent the loss of the case even after the Article took effect. We also found that an accountant's efficiency is not significantly different from that of a lawyer in saving time, whereas prior literature suggests that the former is better than the latter. As for effectiveness, there are no differences between the two types of agent ad litem.