Ascertaining the legal form which would ensure the unity of case law, the role and importance of the Supreme Court decisions as an effective instrument of ensuring case law unity throughout handling of cases remains a matter of intense scientific debate and requires a detailed and comprehensive study. Despite an extensive scope of works focused on the study of various aspects inherent to taking the Supreme Court decisions as the legal form ensuring the unity of case law, it should be noted that legal literature still has not formed a well-established and unified approach to the comprehension of their essence and significance.

The objective of the article is to clarify the significance of the Supreme Court decisions as the legal form ensuring the unity of case law for handling of a specific category of cases, namely, cases concerning taxes, fees and other mandatory payments.

It is established that ensuring of case law unity as the form to implement legal certainty – an integral element of the rule of law principle is one of the key goals of the Supreme Court decisions.

 The ensured unity of case law for handling of cases concerning taxes, fees and other mandatory payments as part of the rule of law principle constitutes a universal guarantee of protection of public and private interests: on the one part, its practical implementation limits the discretionary power of tax authorities preventing that such discretion may grow into administrative arbitrariness, and on the other part – prevents private taxpayers from committing illegal acts and obtaining unjustified tax benefits. Uncertainty in tax law, on the contrary, can entail violations of the rights and legitimate interests of individuals by the State, as well as evasions – consciously or unintentionally – from appropriate fulfillment by taxpayers of their tax liabilities.

The fact that the legislator has introduced the normative structure: “only those types of cassation appeals are permitted which are provided for by law” concerning the grounds upon which cassation appeals may be admitted for consideration by the Supreme Court is generally a progressive step which imparts to the Supreme Court decisions the functional ability to acquire the qualities of the effective legal form ensuring the unity of case law.

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