Taxes on money laundering as a source of state budget revenue

Abstract

Money laundering is a phenomenon that needs to be considered from a multi-faceted perspective. Currently, legislation condemns behaviors that fulfill the elements of the money laundering offense, penalized by Polish criminal law. Additionally, the AML (Anti-Money Laundering) Act introduces sanctions that burden specific institutions due to their failure to fulfill obligations related to combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The introduced criminal and administrative sanctions play a fundamental role in minimizing and combating the investigated phenomenon. The aim of the research conducted by the Author was to compare criminal and administrative sanctions for behaviors aimed at introducing money or other assets obtained from illegal sources or used to finance illegal activities into legal circulation, which is associated with the so-called money laundering. The Author hypothesized that despite these sanctions being imposed for a different type of behavior, penalized by separate legal acts, both criminal and administrative sanctions for broadly understood money laundering, in the form of monetary fines, constitute an important source of revenue for the state budget for various reasons, simultaneously influencing the fulfillment of obligations imposed on public authorities. In the study, primarily the doctrinal-legal research method was utilized, covering legislation, and secondarily, the achievements of doctrine and jurisprudence were considered. Additionally, the historical method, statistical method, and analysis of legal construction from an international perspective were used in the text. The conducted research enables the conclusion that both revenues from criminal and administrative sanctions, despite existing disparities between them, constitute a source of income for the state budget.