The courts did not notice the change in the regime. “The aftermath of strange logic still exists today”
The goals of tax proceedings were different before the adoption of the Constitution in 1997 and they are different today. Even if the provisions regarding the rules for conducting tax proceedings and the rights of citizens in these proceedings have not changed, their interpretation has completely changed due to the fact that the current Constitution protects the rights of citizens and not the rights of the bureaucracy. This also applies to the modes of reconsidering final decisions.
Before the entry into force of the 1997 Constitution, the purpose of conducting tax proceedings was to obtain a final decision. Its substantive legality was irrelevant. The essential good was the convenience of administration, and citizens’ rights were – to put it mildly – secondary to the stability of decisions.
Why repeatedly return to a case that the bureaucracy has already resolved and the files have been shelved? The administration was supposed to act on the basis of the law, and it certainly did so, since in ordinary two-instance proceedings a citizen was unable to effectively challenge its actions.
This is a strange logic, but it has been recognized by legal luminaries for decades and the consequences of such “thinking” function in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) to this day.