The Transformation of Taxation into Racket as a Consequence of a Nihilistic Attitude Toward the Normative Understanding of Law

Objective. This study aims to demonstrate that the rejection of a normative understanding of law poses a primary threat to the rule of law. It further proposes a method for identifying the actual meaning attributed to legal provisions through established law enforcement practice – an approach that enables the development of strategies for protecting legitimate rights and interests. The research employs several methods/ Formal-dogmatic method: limiting the analysis to the legal texts under examination. Logical construction: deriving legal norms from statutory texts. Judicial analysis: examining court decisions to detect the presence or absence of statutorily prescribed facts. Synthesis: extracting the factual grounds for tax liability from judicial acts. Logical definition: applying formal logic to correlate case-specific circumstances described in judgments with legal facts defined in legislation. A case study of judicial practice in tax disputes illustrates the arbitrariness of legal enforcement, beginning with the disregard for establishing and proving formally defined elements of tax violations. The abandonment of a strict normative legal framework leads to a shift: lawful taxation degenerates into a mechanism for the state to extract unlawful revenues and suppress economic activity. This situation becomes particularly pressing in light of the Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on February 29, 2024, where President Vladimir Putin emphasized the inadmissibility of violating the law in relation to entrepreneurs, stating: “They create jobs, employ people, and pay salaries.” Scientific Contribution. The study emphasizes the tangible harm caused by critiques of legal normativism. It offers a method for detecting jurisprudential distortions of statutory law, thereby facilitating the identification of strategies to defend legal rights Practical Significance: The research demonstrates how legal enforcement aligned with statutory norms can be supported through the use of the “LASER-IP-CPC-2020” computer program, when adapted to arbitral disputes. Given the lack of effective judicial protection for taxpayers during appeals against decisions by tax authorities, the study proposes mechanisms for protection through litigation in civil proceedings.