Fiscal law — the public finance's LEGAL frame: the rules governing the state's revenue- expenditure-debt — the fiscal power's exercise AND its limits. The nature (the character's four faces): The public-law core — the state-and-citizen relation (the tax's compulsion; the spending's duty), not the private bargain; The statute-centred discipline — the annual statutes (the Finance-and-Appropriation Acts) riding on the permanent codes (the tax Acts) — fiscal law is WRITTEN law above all; The technical-and-policy blend — the law serving the economics (the rates, the bases, the formulas — the lawyer must read a budget); The constitutional foundation — the fiscal constitution (Unit 2): the money-powers' distribution among the three tiers, the parliament's monopoly, the audit's capstone.
The fiscal power and its limitations (the concept's completion): the state's power to take- and-spend — the taxing power (the compulsory taking, the sovereignty's oldest attribute), the spending power, the borrowing power — limited by: (i) the constitutional limits (the no-taxation- without-law principle; the annuality; the appropriation's discipline; the federal division); (ii) the rights' limits (the property's respect, the proportionality); (iii) the political limits (the parliament's control; the electorate's answer); (iv) the international limits (the treaties' constraints).