Aggrieved Taxpayers Versus Tax Authorities

National tax authorities often find that improving taxpayers' access to justice tends to increase the number of tax disputes, giving rise to a need to strike a workable balance between these two challenges. This extraordinarily useful and informative book looks into the status of tax disputes of some representative countries and their historical and recent moves to attain such a balance. The countries highlighted are Japan, the United States (U.S.), the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, with the European Union represented by Ireland and the Netherlands, from all of which the author makes comparisons of their rules and practices affecting the status of tax disputes and their resolution. Through his analysis, the author identifies common factors that significantly work toward increasing or decreasing the number of tax disputes in a country: tax structure; tax audit; compliance level; modes of tax dispute settlement; level of taxpayers' burden; power and performance of reviewing bodies; complementary administrative and legal measures for taxpayers; and requirement for and effect of filing tax objections/litigations. After having summarized how those factors are at work in those countries, the final chapter delineates reform options to strike a workable balance between the two challenges. In its extraction/analysis of highly disputed themes (e.g., in the case of the U.S., penalties, collection due process, innocent spouse relief, gross income, trade or business expenses), its identification of key factors that affect the number of tax disputes, and its cross-country comparison of how those factors are at work in tax law, procedures governing tax objections/litigations, etc., this is the first book to address in depth the issue of how some types of tax provisions are disputed more frequently than others. It will be of inestimable value to tax professionals and tax authorities in pursuing fairness and speedy resolution of tax disputes.