Within the various branches that are part of public law, there is fiscal law (also known as tax law). Its function is the administration of the legal rules that enable the State to develop and exercise its tax powers.
Tributes or taxes are obligatory economic disbursements that must be made by all citizens to solve the functioning of the state apparatus . Tax law is the division of law that analyzes and establishes the laws related to this procedure. See Abbreviation Finder for acronyms related to Tax Law.
The tax link arises from the state’s need to have money to finance its activity, which is oriented to the common good. This means that, when a subject or a company pays its taxes, it is contributing to the development of its community and, therefore, its own.
The tax relationship, therefore, supposes a series of responsibilities and rights for all its parties. In its broadest aspect, tax law should focus its attention on two issues: the State is only in a position to demand payment of tax when the laws authorize it; the citizen, for his part, only has the obligation to pay those taxes that are established by law.
In the tax relationship, the active subject is the State (it appeals to its power to demand payment of the tax). The natural person or the legal person that is in the role of taxpayer, for its part, is the passive subject.
It should be noted that there are different types of taxes. We can mention direct taxes (which have a direct impact on income) and indirect taxes (which fall on individuals other than the taxpayer), among others.
Birth of tax law
Since civilization exists, that is, since there is a social organization with a certain structure, there are taxes; In fact, in Ancient Egypt, citizens had to pay taxes to the pharaoh and there was also control over the declaration of taxes on animals and fruits. Certain ceramic pieces served as proof of said payments. For this reason, control and inspection cannot be taken as novel aspects of our tax system.
In any case, the foundations of tax law were not laid until Ancient Rome; It is true that in its beginnings there was no fair taxation, but over the years the ways in which States demand tribute from their citizens have been refined. It is worth mentioning that the Romans were the first to carry out controls on assets and take a census of its inhabitants, and to have collection bodies and legal bodies; That is why we can say that the fiscal organization that we enjoy today, we undoubtedly owe to them.
During the Middle Ages, power was represented by the feudal lord, who owned abundant properties and who grew richer every day at the cost of demanding exaggerated tributes from the poorest. In that period the payment was of an anarchic and arbitrary type and the serfs had not only to pay with their scarce assets, but also by rendering those services that the feudal lord demanded of them.
Later, with the emergence of the modern State, tax collection was imposed in a more organized way, in order to have a common public well with which to subsidize everything related to public spending and to be able to satisfy the needs of the entire community. In addition, the rights and obligations of each member of society were specified in order for there to be an order. The State, therefore, was in charge of watching over that organization.
In order to establish collection methods that were increasingly balanced and that contemplated the rights of all people, that State had to develop a collection plan that was adjusted to the legal framework that governed that community.