Comparative Tax Systems

The Judicial Review of the Income Tax in Iraq, the United Kingdom and the United States

Rezhen Ismael Omar

The scope of this research is to identify and consider the methods by which courts in Iraq, the United Kingdom and the United States scrutinize income tax laws and their application. In order to compare the mechanisms of judicial review in these three countries, a comparative legal approach is used. This research analyzes constitutional and procedural landscape of judicial challenge of tax legislation by way of case law analysis, procedural rules, and case precedents. It also constitutes a study of the relationship between the judiciary as a detector and the legislative power as the maker of laws regarding taxation. The novelties in the tax laws and the numerous consequences of taxing and exemption procedures make significant concerns about the judicial exercise of interpretation and review of tax policies. Allegedly, this research aims to examine how efficiently judicial review works in relation to taxation laws across various legal frameworks and the problems when it comes to equal and proper implementation of taxation principles. Iraq, the UK, and the US have different constitutional and legal systems which determine their ways of dealing with Judicial Review. This paper examines the challenges a comparatively young legal system in Iraq experiences in exercising judicial review concerning tax issues. English law enables far reaching judicial review and the US has a robust system of review through the constitutionally provided checks and balances system. Both systems’ consideration of how tax laws were to be reviewed has therefore been colored by history, politics and societies in the two countries. The research finds that judicial review serves an important preventive function that helps maintain the legal and reasonable taxation regimes, at least as long as their highest courts continue to act as they have in the past; however, the intensity and aggressiveness of review have been decreasing gradually in the three countries. As with any major system of public regulation, judicial oversight and supervision remain crucial for global confidence in taxation systems while the presumption of the extend and scope of judicial intrusion remains very much open to debate in every system.