Using ontologies for comparing and harmonizing legislation

Abstract

In the last decades the interst in the problem of comparing and harmonizing legislation has been steadily increasing. One reason is the increasing legal convergence between governments in the European Union, and the increasing traffic of people over borders of jurisdictions. Another reason is the increasing globalization of companies; Products and services are offered in many jurisdictions at the same time, and the product or service has to meet the provisions of all jurisdictions in which it is offered. In the E-POWER project relevant tax legislation and business processes are modeled in UML to improve the speed and efficiency with which the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration can implement decision support systems for internal use and for its clients. These conceptual models have also proven their usefulness for efficient and effective analysis of draft legislation. We are currently researching whether conceptual modeling can also be used to compare 'similar' legislation from different jurisdictions to improve the capacity of the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration to react to future consequences of increased movement of people, products, and money between EU member states and increased harmonization between tax authorities in Europe. In addition, addressing the problem of comparing models is also expected to improve our methodology for modeling legislation. This paper discusses problems and requirements of comparing legislation as we understand them now, and attempts to relate them to relevant research.