This contribution deals with the problem of taxation of athletes. The hypothesis of this paper is the question whether the tax rules governing the taxation of athletes fulfi ll the appropriate formal quality of the legal regulation (formal values of law) required in a democratic legal state or not? The methods used for answering this hypothesis are the analysis of the law and selected jurisprudence of the higher courts; a comparison of the legal position of the athletes in the Czech tax law with European soft law model. Throughout the paper, syntax procedures will be used to create partial conclusions for the purpose of the fi nal thesis. Although the position of collective athletes is concerning the matter of tax expenditures surrealistic, nevertheless we can see deep rationality in the motives of Supreme Administrative Court. The hypothesis of the paper needs to be answered positively, the regulation of the taxation of athletes in its current form does not fulfi ll the formal values of law, especially it fails in the perspective of predictability. Therefore, who knows if the campaign of the courts against the tax rules, which are devoid of formal values, will not continue.