The concept of legal relationship is a tool that lawyers use to describe the legal situation in which entities find themselves due to applicable legal norms. It is therefore a tool for practical analysis of legal norms. The concept of a legal relationship and other legal concepts related to it are used by a lawyer to determine what rights and obligations a particular entity has in a given legal system in relation to the situation of another entity. In other words, it serves to describe the interdependence of the legal situation of entities due to applicable legal norms. Analysis of the legal relationship and related concepts are also useful for researching the behavior of some entities towards others due to applicable legal norms. The concept of legal relationship and the concepts associated with it are therefore a tool for analyzing law in action, thanks to which it is possible to solve a number of legal problems arising in the practice of applying law. It is important for those branches of law in which there are correlations between legal situations of entities of these branches of law. Therefore, it is also important for the tax law and tax research, in which there are relations between the state and taxpayers and other entities of tax law.
Although from the most general point of view the structure of the legal relationship may seem to be very similar, however, legal relations in particular branches of law have their own characteristics. This diversity results from the fact that the content of elements determining specific legal relations in these branches of law is different, such as: the subject of the law, facts causing the creation and termination of the legal relationship as well as the content of the rights and obligations of the parties to this relationship. Research on these elements of the legal relationship allows to achieve specific theoretical and practical goals. Due to the fact that they are embedded in applicable law, they allow to build a model of legal relationship, which becomes a tool for practical analysis of applicable law. Secondly, their study allows to deepen knowledge of the characteristics of individual elements of this relationship, such as the subjects of this right. Thanks to this, it is possible to decide what features an entity should have to be able to become the owner of the rights or obligations of a given branch of law, including tax law. The structure of subjectivity in this branch of law is significantly different from the legal subjectivity of civil law. They also allow to catch the relationships between individual rights and individual rights and obligations regulated in a given branch of law. Finally, they allow to understand the premises that give rise to the rights and obligations incumbent on the subjects of a given branch of law. This in turn allows for an in-depth analysis of the tax law norms themselves, as well as views on individual institutions of this law and their critical analysis, as well as a critical analysis of the views of case law on these legal institutions.
In the field of tax law science of various countries, models of a tax law relationship have been already created, which allow ordering and analysis of tax law norms. However, many other countries as the Polish tax law science did not pay much attention to this issue of tax law. Therefore, in many countries the most general model of tax law relationship created by the theory of law is used. The same has happened in Polish tax law science. However, this is an insufficient model, as it requires taking into account the state of tax legislation and the specifics of its regulations. Hence, considerations of tax law doctrine’s sometimes lack consistency due to the lack of an appropriate research tool in the form of a tax law relationship model. They also often conflict with each other, because the starting points for the analyses are different. Therefore, further research on tax law relationship is necessary in this field.
This paper presents the assumptions concerning scientific research on developing the concept of a tax law relationship.