Contribution of Taxpayer’s Wilfulness and Negligence in the Case of Tax Administrative Penalty

• Main Authors: HUANG, YU-HSIN, 黃郁炘
• Other Authors: 陳敏
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/98602317641002726207

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 法律學系一般生組 === 97 === The present study aimed to discuss how Article 7 of the Administrative Penalty Act can be applied to explaining the taxpayer’s willfulness and negligence when the taxpayer violates the regulation of Tax Administrative Penalty. It goes without saying that the taxpayer should not be held liable to punishment if he/she did not act intentionally or negligently. The purpose of legislation in the prescribed Tax Administrative Penalty was to ensure taxpayers filing their tax returns in time and thus tax liability will be ascertained. However, there was short of a unified and applicable code to exercise the Tax Administrative Penalty in practice, hence this may result in divergent viewpoints by dissimilar standards and ruling procedures. In practice, the courts have discussed that taxpayer will be accused of failure to filing a tax return even if the negligence was caused by accountant or attorney who is only the agent of the taxpayer. From the viewpoint of the court, the taxpayer can be considered as statutory obligor, the experts such as bookkeeper, accountant was only authorized to deal with filing the sales tax. Therefore, those experts can only represent as the taxpayer’s agent instead of taxpayer themselves. According to Article 224 of the civil code, the taxpayers, themselves, should be in charge of their agents’ violation of law. After the Administrative Penalty Act was promulgated, the rules of willfulness and negligence in tax administrative penalty were defined in Article 7 of the Administrative Penalty Act. It suggested that where an act violates a statutory duty and is thus subject to the administrative penalty even though intent may not necessarily be an essential condition for establishing the offender's liability, negligence would be one such condition. In such case, it would be much more appropriate to apply Paragraph 2, Article 7 of the Administrative Penalty Act and other related developments of its history to deciding whether taxpayer is culpable. According to Article 7 of the Administrative Penalty Act, the willfulness and negligence of organization should be closely connected to the organization’s internal operation which is the relationship between organization and high level management and employees. The issue seems to be closely related to the explanations and application of Paragraph 2, Article 7 and Article 15 of Administrative Penalty Act. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the taxpayers’ willfulness and negligence when the taxpayers are the organizations. The current study, therefore, intended to review the course of change and development of Paragraph 2, Article 7 and Article 15 of Administrative Penalty Act and its theoretical backgrounds in German and United States in order to understand how willfulness and negligence of the organization was discussed under the legislation mode of Paragraph 2, Article 7 and Article 15 of Administrative Penalty Act.