On Normative Arrows and Comparing Tax Automation Systems
Paulus Meessen · 2023
Automation of legal norms can only exist because of compromises made in translating laws in natural languages to code (executables) in formal languages. Tax and benefits law is canonically considered one of the least compromising domains of law in terms of this nuance. In this paper, I compare two domain-specific languages used in the automation of tax and benefits law: Catala, which is proposed for use by the French Tax Authority, and Regelspraak, which the Dutch Tax Authority uses. The comparison is based on a top-down modeling approach, which does not try to go all the way down to the technical differences but aims to identify the points at which the two approaches diverge in the way the norm is shaped. It becomes evident that a lot of decisions that affect normativity are made inside the technical components of these systems. Safeguarding legal protection at the creation of automation of norms will likely require cross-domain efforts.