This article is one of the first in Ukraine to specifically examine domestic practice in the field of tax and legal disputes under martial law. The main purpose of the article is to clarify the essence and causes of: 1) the shift in the value epicenter of disputes between taxpayers and tax authorities of Ukraine within the paradigmatic boundaries of the military doctrine of tax law; 2) the transformation of approaches in Ukrainian judicial practice to understanding and interpreting the principle of legal certainty in tax law. The methodological tools for understanding the problem are based on axiological, genetic, and systemic approaches, as well as general scientific principles of objectivity and historicism.

The authors demonstrate that their value epicenter has shifted from the traditional axis of substantive opposition between the private interests of the taxpayer and the public interests of society represented by the state to the line of functional opposition between the legal statuses of the taxpayer based on the criterion of the possibility or impossibility of the latter to fulfill his fiscal obligations to the state in a timely manner. This has also led to a change in the approach of the Ukrainian judiciary to the resolution of tax and legal disputes in the context of martial law, primarily by shifting the focus of the administration of justice to the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of taxpayers. The Ukrainian legislature’s de facto refusal to apply the principle of stability of tax legislation in its interpretation by the Tax Code of Ukraine during martial law has led to a profound qualitative transformation in the Ukrainian judiciary’s understanding of the principle of legal certainty in tax law. This was largely facilitated by the Ukrainian administrative courts’ shift from an elementary approach to a systematic approach to understanding the principles of tax law. The conclusion of the domestic judiciary that the principle of stability of tax legislation should be applied in its systemic connection with all other principles of tax legislation proved to be particularly innovative, worldview and methodologically significant. A decision contrary to the above approach in terms of worldview and methodology was adopted in January 2025 by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. De jure, it became a new standard of constitutionality for tax law, and de facto, it covertly protects the principle of stability of tax legislation as understood by the Tax Code of Ukraine. The above-mentioned standard of constitutionality of tax law contrasts sharply with the practical tax policy of Ukraine in a state of martial law and with the systemic nature of taxation.

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