Tax evasion as an illegal form of tax avoidance

Abstract

The life of a country and a society, as a whole, is financed from public revenues. Taxes are one, probably the most important, form of public revenue, and every legislator, including ours, regulates in detail the establishment and functioning of the tax system as a whole. Failure to collect taxes would lead to a complete financial collapse of a country, so certain forms of avoiding tax obligations - tax evasion - are sanctioned by legislators most severely. Such behaviour is considered as a delict, as the legislator applies the ultima ratio, and criminalizes certain evasive actions as criminal acts, i.e., defines a special set of criminal acts as tax crimes. Bearing in mind the relative prevalence of this phenomenon, as well as the exceptional effect and importance that tax evasion has, both for the state as a whole, and for the individual, this paper, in the first place, characterizes the phenomenon of tax evasion and its forms. Using the historical-legal method, the paper gives an overview of the issue of tax evasion and the way it was dealt with historically, starting with Dušan's code and ending with the former Yugoslav legislation. Then, by looking at the relevant legislation, some positive criminal-legal incriminations of tax evasion are pointed out, particularly the incrimination of tax evasion as a criminal offense in the domestic legislation. Finally, the concluding thoughts speak about the potential need for a different regulation of this criminal offense, while paying attention to the practical implementation of legal rules in connection with the detection and prosecution of the criminal offense of tax evasion.

Keywords

• tax evasion
• tax crimes
• taxes