The purpose of this article is to answer a handful of research questions. Can the numerous reliefs and exemptions provided for in tax law be qualified as the public subjective rights of the taxpayer?
Answering the question formulated in this way requires the verification of the research hypothesis, according to which tax reliefs and exemptions are, contrary to the judgments of the CT and the SAC, the subjective rights of the taxpayer.
Generally speaking, no publications in the tax law literature are devoted to the topic of interpreting tax reliefs and exemptions as the subjective rights of the taxpayer.
The main conclusion is that only systemic tax reliefs and only those systemic exemptions that jointly meet the two conditions can be considered the subjective rights of a taxpayer. First of all, they have a nature of disposable exemptions, i.e. the ones which involve the taxpayer’s right to make a choice. Secondly, the use of an exemption cannot be subject to administrative discretion. In the case of systemic tax reliefs, the verification of the first condition is always positive because there is no doubt that all systemic reliefs regulated in tax laws are the subjective rights of the taxpayer

The aim of this article is to answer the question whether taxpayers are entitled to any subjective rights that are overtly, unambiguously and legibly laid down in tax law. The author presents the title issue by analysing a broad base of judicature by
Poland’s CT, the EUCJ and Poland’s administrative courts, also discussing the relevant literature concerning subjective rights as coded in the provisions of the Polish Constitution and tax law. Taxpayers’ subjective rights may constitute an effective protection measure not only vis-a-vis the administrative discretion of tax authorities, but also in the event of their abuse of administrative power in relations with entities obliged to pay levies.

One of the most effective systems of protection of human rights is the system defined in the European Convention of Human Rights. Until 2010, the European Court of Human Rights had rarely handled tax cases because, in principle, it excluded this category of cases from its jurisdiction in the field of the protection of taxpayer rights. Such cases had always been qualified – in accordance to the requirements of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights – as criminal or civil (property-related) cases. A major change in the ECHR’s approach to cases featuring tax-related aspects occurred in 2011. Given the protection of the right to property as set out in Protocol No. 1, the ECHR ranted taxpayers protection related to the return of value added tax in situations in which the taxpayer fulfilled their record-keeping obligations. The adopted trend in the issued decisions is seen to be dominant, but to be considered grounded, a greater number of ECHR judicial decisions than at present is needed. There is no doubt that the new tendency in the judicial decisions issued by the ECHR may have a major impact on the decisions issued by administrative courts in Poland.