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As part of the law to combat tax fraud and serious economic and financial crime adopted at the end of 2013, the legislator strengthened the powers of the tax authorities, allowing them to use any means of evidence, including illicit ones. However, it came up against the reservations of the Constitutional Council. The Conseil d’Etat has now drawn the consequences of this, by making a complete turnaround in its case law on the subject: the tax authorities cannot rely on documents that have been duly communicated to them but which have subsequently been deemed illegal.

As part of the law to combat tax fraud By allowing ‘the administration to use all the means at its disposal to complete its investigations, in particular all lists, all items lawfully transmitted by the courts, including when the source of these items is not lawful’¹, the legislature intended to deliver, ‘like a guillotine, the coup de grâce’² to tax fraud and evasion. When examining this text, the Constitutional Council reverted to the pre-existing principle of the independence of tax and criminal proceedings. In the absence of a coup de grâce, this means mercy for taxpayers prosecuted by the tax authorities on the basis of documents subsequently annulled by the criminal courts.and serious economic and financial crime adopted at the end of 2013, the legislator has strengthened the powers of the tax authorities by allowing them to use all types of evidence, including illicit evidence. However, it came up against the reservations of the Constitutional Council. The Conseil d’Etat has now drawn the consequences of this, by making a complete turnaround in its case law on the subject: the tax authorities cannot rely on documents that have been duly communicated to them but which have subsequently been deemed illegal.

The principle of independence of criminal and tax proceedings

Fiscal fraud is punishable under tax law by tax reminders, surcharges, penalties and interest for late payment. It is also punishable under criminal law by fines, imprisonment and additional penalties. As a result, the tax judge on the one hand and the criminal judge on the other may have to deal with the same facts. This duality of prosecutions is explained by their different purpose and nature: tax proceedings aim to reinstate tax (a mainly budgetary objective) while criminal proceedings aim to punish fraud (a mainly repressive objective).

It is this difference in purpose and nature that has led judges to establish the principle of independence of the two proceedings: each follows its own course, at its own pace, without the conclusions of one necessarily being taken into account by the other. However, the scope of this principle of independence of proceedings is assessed differently by the criminal court and the tax court. In the limited context of this article, we will focus exclusively on the question of the impact on tax proceedings of defects affecting criminal proceedings.

The traditional position of the tax judge

The Conseil d’Etat recognises the authority of res judicata in criminal cases only for ‘decisions of the trial courts that rule on the merits of the public action’³. In other words, the Conseil d’Etat refuses to draw the consequences of a decision by the criminal court to set aside procedural documents.

The solution was set out in two long-standing rulings of principle: ‘where the tax authorities have regularly obtained disclosure of documents held by the judicial authorities, the fact that these documents have subsequently been annulled by the criminal court does not deprive the authorities of the right to rely on them in order to establish the taxes due⁴’. This has been confirmed on several occasions, both by the Conseil d’Etat⁵ and by the Administrative Courts of Appeal⁶.

The Conseil d’Etat thus refused, as its rapporteur⁷ nevertheless invited it to do, to draw the consequences of the case law of the Cour de cassation⁸ according to which the annulment of an act by the criminal court has retroactive effect (the annulled documents being deemed never to have appeared in the criminal file). The Conseil d’Etat’s reasoning was as follows: on the date when the administration had exercised its right of communication, the documents appeared in the criminal file and had not yet been cancelled, so that the right of communication had indeed been exercised regularly on that date. The fact that the Code of Criminal Procedure⁹ prohibits, on pain of prosecution, any information against the parties from annulled acts and documents has not led the Conseil d’Etat to change its position¹⁰.

In 1996, Gilles Bachelier proposed ‘a simple principle (…): a document from a procedure annulled by the criminal court does not constitute a form of evidence and cannot be used on its own as a basis for taxation’¹¹. Ironically, it was 17 years later and during the examination of a law aimed at reinforcing the powers of the administration that the wise men of rue Montpensier heard him.

The Constitutional Council’s reservations

As part of its review of the law on combating tax fraud and serious economic and financial crime¹², the Constitutional Council validated Articles 37 and 39 of the law, subject to interpretation. Essentially, Article 37 ¹³ allows the administration to use unlawful documents that are regularly disclosed to it under its right of disclosure or an administrative assistance procedure.

According to the Constitutional Council, these ‘provisions may not, without infringing the requirements arising from Article 16 of the Declaration of 1789, allow the tax and customs services to rely on documents obtained by an administrative or judicial authority under conditions subsequently declared illegal by the judge; subject to this reservation, the legislator, in adopting these provisions, has neither infringed the right to respect for private life nor disregarded the rights of the defence’¹⁴.

The Constitutional Council, by referring to Article 16 of the Declaration of 1789¹⁵ , thus intends to protect respect for private life and the right to a fair trial from any excessive infringement. This reservation of interpretation is binding, pursuant to article 62 of the Constitution, on all administrative and jurisdictional authorities.

The Conseil d’Etat’s reversal

The Conseil d’Etat has now taken note of this and reversed its case law, ruling that the tax authorities cannot use documents subsequently annulled by the courts¹⁶. While the Constitutional Council’s reservation of interpretation is repeated expressis verbis in this decision, it does not lead to the merits of the taxes challenged in the case decided being called into question: the taxpayer did not demonstrate that the documents used by the administration and originating from a seizure carried out in Italy had been obtained under conditions subsequently deemed unlawful by the competent judge.

The reference to the ‘competent’ judge (to establish illegality) is welcome because it has the merit of not restricting the scope of the reservation of interpretation: it could be a criminal court, a civil court, a civil tax court, an administrative court… or even, in the context of administrative assistance, a foreign court?

This jurisprudential turnaround also has the merit of aligning the position of the Conseil d’Etat with that of the Cour de cassation, which ruled that the nullity of a home search and seizure¹⁷ or a police investigation¹⁸ extended to the entire customs procedure initiated on the basis of their results alone.

The impact on ongoing tax disputes

In our view, a distinction should be made between three situations. The situation of taxpayers who are currently being prosecuted for tax offences on the basis of documents that have been annulled by the criminal court poses little difficulty: the reservation of interpretation by the Constitutional Council and the reversal by the Conseil d’Etat should lead the administration to drop the proceedings. If it refuses to do so, the tax judge will draw the appropriate conclusions.

Taxpayers who are the subject of tax proceedings based on seizures, productions or communications obtained by the tax authorities from another authority will be interested to know whether they can take action to have these documents annulled. It would not be surprising to see an increase in the number of such actions. Tax litigation relating to ordinary crime (drug trafficking, for example), which is mainly the result of audits carried out on the basis of information transmitted by the judicial authorities, is likely to be particularly affected.

Lastly, the situation of taxpayers who have been the subject of tax proceedings that have now been concluded (for example, by a decision of the tax judge that is unfavourable to the taxpayer and has become final) but which were based on documents subsequently deemed illegal by the criminal court is more problematic. It could be argued, as Bernard Hatoux¹⁹ suggests, that the decision of the criminal court constitutes an event of such a nature as to reopen a claim period within the meaning of Article R 196-1 of the Book of Tax Procedures. Case law recognises that such an event is characterised in the presence of facts or circumstances likely to have an influence on the very principle of taxation, its system or its method of calculation²⁰. The administrative doctrine²¹ cites the example of a court decision fixing, with retroactive effect, the true situation of the taxpayer or the real nature of a taxable item. The reasoning seems to us to be capable of being extended to a court decision annulling with retroactive effect documents which the administration cannot rely on to establish the tax without violating the Constitution.

1 – Minister for the Budget, National Assembly, second sitting of Thursday 20 June 2013.

2 – Mrs Claudine Schmid, National Assembly, second sitting of Thursday 20 June 2013.

3 – G. Goulard, L’indépendance des procédures : retour à un principe traditionnel : RJF 1996, p. 2.

4 – CE 6 December 1995 n° 126826, Section, SA Samep : RJF 1/96 n° 61 ; CE 6 December 1995 n° 90914, Section, Navon : RJF 1/96 n° 62.

5 – CE 10 July 1996 n° 160164, 8th and 9th s.-s., Jacob: RJF 10/96 n° 1176; CE 10 January 2003 n° 217584, 10th and 8th s.-s., Sté Etablissements Bouyer-Guindon: RJF 4/03 n° 450; CE 6 October 1999 n°126827, 8th and 9th s.-s., Aff Jean de Bonnot.

6 – CAA Bordeaux 30 December 1997 no. 95-814, 3rd ch., SA Boularan: RJF 12/98 no. 1451; CAA Lyon 15 July 1999 no. 96-650, 2nd ch., SARL Olivier Service: RJF 2/00 no. 232; CAA Nancy 6 February 2014, no. 12NC00748, M. and Mme Perrotin: Jurisdata no. 2014-007222.

7 – concl. G. Bachelier BDCF 1/96 no. 62; CE 10 July 1996 no. 160164, 8th and 9th s.-s., Jacob: RJF 10/96 no. 1176.

8 – Cass. crim. 30 September 1991 n°90-83.579.

9 – Article 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

10 – CE 6 October 1999 no. 12686.

11 – Ibid.

12 – Cons. const., dec. 4 Dec. 2013, n° 2013-679 DC, Loi relative à la lutte contre la fraude fiscale et la grande délinquance économique et financière: JurisData n° 2013-030673; Dr. fisc. 2013, n° 51-52, comm. 563, note by Ch. de la Mardière.

13 – Now codified in article L10-0 AA of the Livre des procédures fiscales.

14 – Recital 33.

15 – ‘Any Society in which the guarantee of Rights is not ensured, nor the separation of Powers determined, has no Constitution’. See in this regard: Fraisse Régis, ‘L’article 16 de la Déclaration, clef de voûte des droits et libertés’, Les Nouveaux Cahiers du Conseil constitutionnel 3/2014 (N° 44) , p. 9-21.

16 – CE 15 April 2015 n° 373269

17 – Cass. com. 4 June 1996 n° 1080 P, Prodhomme : RJF 10/96 n° 1173

18 – Cass. crim. 16 May 2012 n° 11-683.602 (n° 3125 F-PB) : RJF 4/13 n° 432.

19 – BF 1/14 p. 5, B. Hatoux, la loi et les preuves illicites ou le glaive et la cuirasse

20 – CE 30 January 1976 n° 96173 pl. RJF 3/76 n° 124 ; CE 5 October 2007 n° 294318, 8th and 3rd s.-s., Sté Média Compo : RJF 12/07 n° 1479

21 – BOI-CTX-PREA-10-30 no. 80.

Bertrand Lacombe

Lawyer at the Court, Lacombe Avocats

Experts de premier plan en droit fiscal