Nykiel Włodzimierz (red.), Sęk Małgorzata (red.), Tax Legislation

This book is the result of the international conference Tax Legislation: Legal Standards, Trends, Challenges organized in October 2013 to celebrate the 15^th anniversary of the Centre of Tax Documentation and Studies of the University of Łódź (Poland). The conference was co-organized by the Centre, the Foundation Centre of Tax Documentation and Studies and Marshal’s Office of the Łódźkie Region, in cooperation with the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD) in Amsterdam, the Polish Branch of International Fiscal Association (IFA) and the Polish National Chamber of Tax Advisers.

The conference was held under the honorary patronage of the Marshal of the Sejm and under the patronage of the President of the National Bank of Poland, the Marshal of the Łódźkie Region and the Łódź Special Economic Zone.

The idea behind the conference and the book is to identify standards, trends and challenges in drafting, enacting and assessing tax legislation and to create a picture of the tax legislation in force in different countries. The contemporary legal research is focused mainly on the existing tax law and its application rather than on the legislative activities and their results (i.e. legislative instruments). Meanwhile, it is the course of the legislative process that directly influences the functioning of the tax system. The quality of tax legislation affects the entirety of tax relations: from the position of taxpayers and their attitude towards taxation to the efficacy of tax administration and the scale of tax litigation. The novelty of this book lies in its focus on the purely legal aspects of the tax law-making process and the evaluation of the resulting legislation against diverse, but rather formal than substantive, quality criteria. Identifying standards and contemporary challenges of tax legislation is a necessary step in a quest for creating better tax legislation, more suited to the needs of taxpayers and tax administration in the modern economy. We hope that this book will contribute to the dissemination of knowledge on good practices and contemporary standards in tax law-making.

We would like to express our gratitude to all authors who contributed to the book, as well as all speakers and attendees who redounded to the success of the conference. The conference could not have been organized without the financial support of the partners (EY, Łódź Special Economic Zone), sponsors (City of Łódź Office, TPA Horwath, Wiedza i Praktyka, Wolters Kluwer) and donors (NAU Broker Ubezpieczeniowy Sp. z o.o., Ryszard Wasiak i dr Kristof Zorde). We are grateful for their generous involvement.

Finally, we thank Wolters Kluwer for publishing the book.

Prof. Dr Włodzimierz Nykiel

Małgorzata Sęk