Control of Local Tax Payments: A Comparative Law Case Study

Tax payment is the basic form of fulfilling a tax obligation. It is included in the effective method of removing tax liabilities. As part of the control of payments of local taxes carried out by the tax authorities, it was found that an unauthorized employee of this authority unlawfully accepted payments of taxes that he did not pay to the account of the tax authority. A legal doubt has arisen in this respect as to whether the payment made in the above-mentioned circumstances is the payment of tax that gives rise to the removal of the tax liability. The main goal of the authors, within the research topic undertaken, is to verify the research hypothesis, according to which the taxpayer’s transfer of funds to an unauthorized employee of a tax authority, confirmed by a receipt, cannot be considered as payment of the tax. The study analyzes the above-mentioned issues on the basis, above all, of the provisions of Polish tax law, which do not define the concept of tax payment, although they indicate the forms of payment. In order to get a broader perspective on the subject matter, the author analyzed selected regulations concerning the above-mentioned issues in Hungary and Ukraine.