CYIL vol. 10 (2019)

CYIL 10 ȍ2019Ȏ THE RIGHTS OF THE ELDERLY IN THE CASEǧLAW OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT … According to the dissenting judges it was not the role of the Constitutional Court to assess the amount of pensions and differences in them, but only to examine whether as a result of that measure there is a limitation of property rights, which was not the case according to them. The dissenting judges also criticised the methodology through which the judgment justifies its conclusion about the disproportionality of tax relief depending on the extreme differences in the amount of pensions granted. They claim that the Constitutional Court abandoned its self-limiting approach to the interference with the powers of the legislature in tax regulation. Another conforming judgment of the Constitutional Court in the issue of taxation and the taxation of high-income working pensioners was adopted on 28 June 2016 under file No. Pl. ÚS 18/15. 50 The annulled provision of the Income Tax Act 51 established that the exemption of regularly paid pensions from tax in general by law shall not apply where the total income of the taxpayer exceeds the amount of CZK 840,000 in the respective tax period. In that case, the taxpayer’s taxable income as well as his/her pension will be taxed. The Constitutional Court found also this saving tax measure as unconstitutional, reasoning that although the uniformity of the tax burden does not mean the identity of the tax burden for all, but only the fulfilment of the postulate that the different should be treated differently and the same should be treated equally, while the degree of diversity of subjects and situations must match the degree of differences in legal regulation. The uniform tax burden, however, means that the taxpayers with the same (analogous) financial performance must be taxed in the same (analogous) manner, or that the taxation of higher income must be adequate compared with the tax burden on lower income. The Constitutional Court has found the extreme disparity between the differences in the tax burden in relation to the differences in the amount of income, while the postulate that the different should be treated differently and the same should be treated equally was not fulfilled, since the tax affects the identical parts of the income of the two groups and does not constitute a difference in their income. The judgment, file No. Pl. ÚS 4/07, of 1 December 2009 was also indirectly connected with the issues of taxation and the related benefits related to old-age pensioners, 52 through which the Constitutional Court did not find as discriminatory the legislation that in connection with the passing of the amendment to the Value Added Tax Act that provided recipients of pensions from the Czech pension insurance with a one-off contribution in order to compensate for an increase in living costs in connection with changes in the amount of value added value, or to facilitate the transition to a one-time increase in prices due to the new rates of value added tax. The fact that this amount has not been provided also to Slovak pensioners, despite taking into account the amount of disposable contribution (CZK 1,000), was not found to be constitutionally contradictory. This text does not consider the judgment case-law that responds to individual constitutional complaints. With regard to the subject and scope of this text, it will not deal with the case- law of the so-called Slovak reasons either, including the most criticised and most commented judgment in the topic of the relationship between the EU law and the case-law of the Constitutional Court, namely the plenary judgment issued on the basis of a constitutional complaint and containing the claim that the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled 50 (271/2016 Coll., N 121/81 CC Coll. 889). 51 Section 4 (3) of Act No. 586/1992 Coll., on income taxes, as amended, effective on the date of submission of the petition. 52 2009 (N 249/55 CC Coll. 397; 10/2010 Coll.).

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