Has the contemporary legislative chaos invalidated thedogmatics of tax law?

The author seeks to find an answer to the question whether the condition of today’s tax law has, in an unbiasedapproach, dethroned the dogmatism of tax law as a superior method of interpretation. This observation is supported,in particular, by: (i) an excessive amount of regulations introduced without adequate waiting periods; (ii)conceptual chaos causing that some new regulations tend to be amended, modified or replaced prior to theircoming into effect; (iii) a disproportionate amount of transitional, episodic, and final regulations forming altogethera multilayer structure of the legislation-in-force; (iv) legislative slovenliness and untrustworthiness of thelegislator owing to the stakeholders’ influence on the regulatory content. The major new phenomenon affectingthe legislator’s trustworthiness is the suspicions expressed by taxpayers that the regulations might have beenmade not on a bona fide basis, i.e. in compliance with public interest (however the latter might be understood).Given the circumstances, a phenomenon emerges of taxpayers’ boycotting the untrustworthy regulations—somethingthat never appeared on a larger scale in the past. In determining the content of the ‘read law’ (i.e. the onethat the entity concerned has got acquainted with and intends to understand; or, the one that is directly appliedby the tax-law entity concerned), a (passive) use of the formal-dogmatic interpretation proves to be unreliable, ifpossible at all. Those taxpayers who have been the most loyal adherents of this interpretative method tendnowadays to apply an equitable or intuitive interpretation inst ead.