Regulatory impact assessments (Ria) As an input in tax law interpretation: Analysis of the administrative courts verdicts

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to empirically examine the role of Regulatory Impact Assessments (RIAs) accompanying draft laws submitted by the Council of the Ministers as an input in purpose-oriented interpretation of tax law, carried out by Polish Administrative Courts. To this end, full-text database of the universe of Administrative Courts verdicts (CBOIS) had been queried in order to uncover all court decisions issued from Jan 1st 2001 to Dec 31st 2022 and mentioning RIAs in their written motives. All in all 14 decisions of SAC and 39 decisions of FIACs had been located – the result that can be interpreted as an evidence of scant use of RIA as an input for statutory interpretation of the tax law. Qualitative analysis reported in the paper illustrates what sort of information had been recovered by justices from RIA. Results suggest that potential offered by RIA’s coverage of ‘lawmaker’s intent’ is still not fully utilized in the process of tax law interpretation. However, any reliance on this sort of documents have to be accompanied with critical analysis of their quality and role in lawmaking process. Conditional forecasts (what impact is reasonably expected) should not be mistaken with statements of the intent (what impact is desired). Moreover, perfunctory RIA, prepared as part of window-dressing exercise, not genuine analysis underpinning the decision-making process, could turned out misleading. JEL Classification: K34