Case law handed down from the tax courts
The other important source of tax law is the case law handed down from the tax
courts. Under the German legal system, there is no doctrine of binding
precedent in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the term, and lower tax court decisions
are, at best, indicative, or of use in developing one’s own line of argument.
Cases decided by the appeal court, the Supreme Tax Court, carry far greater
weight and are usually respected as precedents by the tax authorities. If the
finance ministry disagrees with the position taken, it will often issue a “decree
of non-appliance” ordering tax offices to ignore the judgment except in the case
actually decided.
Case law handed down from the Constitutional Court or from
the European Court of Justice is, of course, binding, although often the effect is
to prompt the government to take action to amend the statute.
EU Forecast
euf:ba18e:128/nws-01