Criminal Penalties for the Crime of Tax Evasion in Iraqi and Algerian Law

Abstract

Penal sanctions for tax evasion are the appropriate guarantee to reduce the phenomenon of tax evasion, as the penalty resulting from the taxpayer’s failure to meet his obligations to pay the tax is a guarantee to collect the tax debt and a deterrent to anyone who tries to evade paying it. Most tax legislations have imposed criminal penalties on the taxpayer who evades paying the tax, including the Iraqi and Algerian legislators, as their laws, including the general rules represented by the Penal Code and the special tax legislations, have imposed penalties that deprive freedom, such as imprisonment, and financial penalties represented by a fine, as well as complementary and consequential penalties. In this study, the legal texts related to imposing penalties on tax defaulters were examined and analyzed by stating the deficiency in some legal articles related to the crime of tax evasion. In addition, the Iraqi tax legislator addressed the penalty of imprisonment in its tax laws and considered it a misdemeanor crime, but did not punish the case of recidivism in committing the crime of tax evasion after the execution of the penalty, as the Algerian tax legislator did. The latter also addressed the penalty of imprisonment in its tax laws and made it a misdemeanor crime, as the Iraqi tax legislator did. The latter also did not address the penalty of the legal person, but rather went to the general rules stipulated in the Penal Code No. 111 of 1969, as amended, as the legal person was not punished with the penalty of imprisonment, but with the penalty of a fine, while the Algerian tax legislator determined the responsibility of the legal person exclusively in Article 36, paragraph one of the Stamp Law, with the penalty of a fine. We also concluded that the Iraqi tax legislator must include the crime of recidivism in committing the crime of tax evasion in its legal texts in order to achieve justice in applying the penalty, so that there is discrimination. Between those who commit the crime for the first time and those who are accustomed to committing it repeatedly, and as a result, this achieves financial deterrence that achieves the punishment, as well as the necessity of tightening the criminal penalties for the crime of tax evasion in its tax texts, whether they are deprivation of freedom or financial or a combination of both.