Tax Law as an Independent Branch of Law in Central and Eastern European Countries

Abstract

Tax law science has a longstanding tradition in the USA and Western Europe and is sufficiently advanced that the question is hardly even posed whether tax law can be considered an independent branch of law. In contrast, Central and Eastern European legal science has only recently admitted the independent existence of financial law. Financial law, however, is a very broad area of law covering public finance, the financial sector (banking, insurance, capital markets), currency and foreign exchange, accounting, etc. In the next phase of development of financial law it will be necessary to react to these facts, which will without doubt lead to a diversification of financial law. The main goal of this article is to confirm or refute the hypothesis that tax law is an independent branch of law in Central and Eastern European countries, specifically in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. For that purpose the criteria for being considered an independent branch of law are analyzed, namely: separate and specific object of legal regulation, method of legal regulation, system and system coherence of legal norms, and social acceptance of the branch.