## Facts

- A 1996 statutory amendment expanded tax authorities’ ability to obtain individuals’ bank, brokerage, and investment-order information.
- Before the amendment, tax authorities generally obtained bank information only through a court or public prosecutor request.
- The amendment removed the prior requirement of judicial or prosecutorial involvement and authorized direct disclosure of customer financial data to tax authorities.
- The amendment also permitted broader inter-institutional exchange of customer information among financial entities.
- An authorized state applicant initiated abstract constitutional review, arguing the expansion of access to financial data violated a constitutionally protected sphere of privacy and rule-of-law requirements.

## Issues

1. Whether a constitutional right to privacy includes protection of financial information covered by bank and brokerage secrecy.
2. Whether statutory authorization allowing tax authorities broad access to bank and investment data without prior independent authorization violates constitutional rule-of-law limits and privacy protections.
3. What standards of legality, necessity, proportionality, and procedural safeguards must govern compelled disclosure of financial data for tax enforcement.

## Decision

- The tribunal recognized a constitutional right to privacy, including protection of personal information and financial data.
- The tribunal held that state access to bank and related financial data is an interference with privacy that requires strict legal limits and safeguards.
- The tribunal upheld the legitimacy of using bank data to enforce tax laws as a public-interest objective.
- The tribunal found the 1996 amendments unconstitutional to the extent they enabled overly broad, insufficiently delimited access and removed meaningful independent oversight; other, properly constrained elements could remain permissible.

## Legal Principles

- Constitutional privacy protection can be derived from rule-of-law guarantees and secrecy-of-correspondence protections, supplemented by binding international privacy norms.
- Financial information (bank accounts, brokerage activity, investment orders) is within the protected sphere of private life because it can reveal sensitive aspects of personal and associational life.
- Interference with privacy must be:
  - Authorized by clear, precise, and foreseeable law defining who may seek data, for what purposes, and by what procedure; and
  - Necessary and proportionate, limited to what is required for concrete, defined tax-enforcement purposes.
- Strong procedural safeguards are required for serious intrusions into informational privacy, including independent oversight (judicial or equivalent) and controls preventing misuse, overcollection, and repurposing.
- Tax enforcement is a legitimate aim but cannot justify blanket or routine access to sensitive financial data without strict limits and effective review mechanisms.

## Conclusion

The tribunal treated expanded tax-authority access to bank and brokerage information as a privacy intrusion that may be justified only under clear statutory limits, strict proportionality, and independent safeguards, and it invalidated portions of the 1996 amendments that authorized broad, largely uncontrolled disclosure.


Tax Data Case (K 21/96) (Pol. Const. Trib. 1997)