الرافدین للحقوق (Dec 2011)
The Income tax source in Iraqi tax Legislation A comparative study
Abstract
The system of funds is one of the most important legal centres that lead to disputes of laws because money is the result of work and humanitarian efforts to all human beings wherever they are and repeated every day.The income tax source is the item subject to the tax or the object of the tax burden. This source may be a person or property. therefore taxes may be divided into taxes on persons a taxes on property which may be single or multiple and may be unified or specific.Thus, tax legislation differed from those that were introduced in the form of the Egyptian tax law, and some of the legislations still adopt the tax system despite the issuance of new legislation such as the Syrian Law. The Jordanian and Iraqi legislations are in close proximity to the unified taxation system except for revenues resulting from the real estate, and that the introduction of this system, or it may be due to the circumstances of each country and the extent of dependence on direct taxes or indirect taxes to cover the State's ongoing and increasing expenditures to achieve economic, political, social and financial aims each political regime attempts to achieve .The process of identifying the tax source is considered a precise matter in regulating tax and the first work done by the legislator when regulating taxation is to select the source on the tax is imposed. The first chapter deals with the theoretical study of income tax and includes four chapters: Preliminary chapter: The essence of the income tax source first section: The theoretical study of the income tax source. and is includes for chapters as follows: First chapter: The nature of the income upon which the tax is imposed. Second chapter: The determination of the income tax source concerning the object. Third chapter: The determination of the income tax source concerning the person. Fourth chapter: The determination of the income tax source concerning the place. Second section: The Practical study of the income tax source and includes also four chapters. First chapter: The revenue resulting form labour. Second chapter: The revenue resulting form capital. Third chapter: The revenue resulting form labour and capital. Fourth chapter: non-periodical income.The research concluded with a number of results, the most important of which are: 1- The Iraqi tax legislator took the principle of taxing net income rather than total, thus complying with the majority of tax legislations, ie, he took the principle of deducting the cost of gross income to reach net income and transferring it to taxable income after deduction of personal exemptions and permits. 2. The Iraqi tax legislator has taken the broad concept of costs as it provides for the reduction of many expenses and is not directly related to the production of income such as donations, legal maintenance and insurance. 3. The Iraqi tax legislator did not give a precise and clear definition of the meaning of income. In paragraph (2) of Article (1) of the law, however, the concept of income is defined as "the net income of the taxpayer from the sources specified in Article 2 of the law", which is not considered a definition In terms of scientific and technical, and is in line with the tax laws compared to the comparative census of the sources and the good work of the Iraqi tax law because there are difficulties that may challenge the definition and open a wide area of divergence of opinion and diligence. 4. The Iraqi tax legislator took mainly the criteria of residence and source of income but did not ignore the criteria of nationality and home and used them in the field of determining the standard of residence. The Iraqi tax law discriminates between Iraqi, Arab and foreign residents, and distinguished between the establishment of natural and moral persons. The Iraqi tax legislator has taken the tax year, and the concept of the year in the Iraqi Income Tax Law has different concepts (the year of income, the estimated year, the accounting year). The Iraqi legislator came out of the general rule and the tax on profits realized in less than or more than a year, Some entries are subject to non-discretionary years and tax is imposed on profits that accrue in the accounting year and not the estimated year. 6. The Iraqi tax legislator subjected the profits of illegal income to income taxes despite the fact that the Iraqi Income Tax Law did not deal with the extent to which the profits of illegal businesses were subject to or not. 7. The Iraqi Income Tax Law did not stipulate capital gains on income tax, and the financial authority in Iraq tended not to subject capital gains to income tax. 8. The Iraqi tax law has followed the same approach as most of the tax legislation in the subject of the profits of the business of income tax and has been expanded in order to achieve its financial objectives of the Treasury and the largest available as possible.
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