Judicial principles and studies
Income Tax: Expert Report and the Choice to Follow Cassation or Not
The study examines whether an appellate court must ground its decision to follow or not follow cassation on sound factual and legal bases, particularly when expert accounting reports contain contradictions.
Updated: 10 September 2026
Prepared and reviewed by: Ashraf Al-Khawaja
Subject
The points address the appellate court’s discretion to decide whether to follow cassation, conditioned on grounding that decision in sound factual and legal foundations, with particular focus on accounting expert reports concerning the plaintiff’s books.
Summary
The materials reveal a discrepancy: an appendix stated the plaintiff holds audited official accounts but lacking documentary support and unsuitable for expertise, whereas the initial expert report described the accounts as audited by an external auditor, computerized, containing accounting entries, payment vouchers, invoices, an item card, a non‑editable accounting program, analytical sales/purchases records, and a computerized VAT-related account. The auditor had relied on the accounts, and the absence of supporting documents was not treated as rendering the accounts unusable for expertise. Given this contradiction, the appellate court should have ordered a new expertise conducted by a larger panel of experts to resolve the inconsistency.
Practical significance
The points illustrate that appellate decisions on whether to follow cassation should rest on clear factual and legal reasoning, and that conflicting findings in expert documentation justify commissioning additional multi‑expert technical examination. This content is a general educational summary and not a judicial text or legal advice.
Sources and references
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