Theoretical and methodological foundations of conflict management studies in tax legal relations

This paper discusses the problems of conflicts that may be from time to time initiated and settled in the field tax legal relations. The emphasis is placed on the suggestion that the evolution of scientific concepts of conflict is based on the interdisciplinary approach: the paper concludes on the impossibility of separating the philosophical, social, psycholinguistic and legal aspects of the conflict. Complex and systematic analysis of the "conflict" category using the integrative approach has been performed as part of the research. Differentiated state-of-art approaches to the conflict as a subject of scientific analysis may be classified into two primary groups: 1) the approaches, where the conflict is considered in a narrow specific sense; 2) the approaches where the conflict is studied from interdisciplinary perspective. It is determined that any conflict is based on certain confrontation that plays a systemically important framework role both for individual types of conflicts, and for different level of scientific conflict studies. Nevertheless, is concluded that the presence of such confrontation only creates prerequisites for possible behaviour, while the interpersonal relations – i.e. the social category – are pivotal for individual choice of specific communicative interaction strategy. The legal nature and attributive properties of tax conflicts are also discussed from the financial law perspective. The paper distinguishes five specific groups of factors that confirm the actual presence of conflict tax legal relations. The special attention is paid to the tax dispute characterization (as one of the tax conflict development stages) and the remedies available for taxpayer rights protections. In particular, the paper discusses the issues of the taxpayer legal self-defense as the guaranty of subjective rights exercise and lawful interests protection in legal relations as a key for prevention of tax conflicts and disputes. Finally, the reasons are given to substantiate the conclusion that the tax dispute basically comes down to a mechanism of guaranteeing the interested party’s subjective rights enforcement and the balance of public and private interests in the field of taxation.