Definition
Reviewing taxation is the process by which a court orders a re-examination of a previously taxed bill of costs — typically an attorney's or solicitor's bill that has already been assessed by a court officer (historically called a master or taxing master). Where the initial taxation was conducted under an erroneous legal principle or mistaken factual impression, the court may direct the master to revisit specific items that were allowed or disallowed, correcting the assessment without requiring an entirely new proceeding.
The term combines two distinct legal concepts: "taxation" as applied to costs (the judicial assessment and approval of a party's claimed legal fees and expenses), and "reviewing" in the sense of a second look or reconsideration by the same officer under corrected guidance from the court.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Reviewing" means examining or assessing something again, typically for purposes of evaluation or criticism. "Taxation" in common usage refers to the system by which governments levy charges on income, property, or transactions.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Taxation" — the act of laying a tax, or of imposing taxes; also, the aggregate of taxes imposed. "Review" — a second or repeated examination; revision.
The gap here is significant. Neither the modern nor the historical common definition of "taxation" includes the assessment of legal costs — a purely technical usage confined to court procedure. A researcher encountering "reviewing taxation" in a historical legal source who applies the ordinary meaning of taxation (government revenue) will be entirely misled. The term has nothing to do with fiscal or revenue law.
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Common Confusion
REVIEWING TAXATION vs. TAX REVIEW / JUDICIAL REVIEW OF TAXATION: These are categorically different. "Tax review" and "judicial review of taxation" concern a court's authority to scrutinize government-imposed levies — income taxes, property taxes, duties. Reviewing taxation, as a term of art in court procedure, concerns the re-examination of a bill of costs in civil litigation. The confusion is compounded by the modern dominance of fiscal taxation, which has made the costs-assessment sense of "taxation" nearly invisible to contemporary researchers.
REVIEWING TAXATION vs. RETAXATION: These terms overlap but are not identical. Retaxation (or re-taxation) typically refers to the act of taxing a bill of costs anew, sometimes before a different officer or under fresh authority. Reviewing taxation is more precisely an order directing the same master to reconsider specific items in a prior taxation where error has been identified. The distinction is procedural rather than conceptual.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in historical English common law procedure, equity practice, or early American procedural sources will encounter this term in contexts that look, at first glance, like fiscal law. The term appears almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century procedural manuals, practice guides, and court rules governing the taxation of costs — a body of law that had its own elaborate vocabulary largely displaced by modern cost-shifting statutes and rules.
Several traps exist. First, the term "taxation" in legal costs contexts is archaic in American practice. Federal courts and most state courts now use "assessment" or "review of costs" rather than taxation. A researcher searching modern databases for "reviewing taxation" in the costs sense will find almost nothing — the underlying concept survives, but the vocabulary does not. Second, historical English sources (particularly King's Bench and Chancery practice manuals) use this term with precision; American sources from the same era sometimes imported it inconsistently. Third, the procedural trigger for reviewing taxation — that items were "allowed or disallowed on some erroneous principle, or under some mistaken impression" — is a standard that maps loosely onto modern abuse-of-discretion review of cost awards, but the analogy should not be pushed too far.
For corpus researchers, this term is a gateway into the broader cluster of historical cost-taxation vocabulary: taxing master, bill of costs, allowance and disallowance, special allowance, and the distinction between party-and-party costs versus solicitor-and-client costs. Understanding reviewing taxation requires first understanding that "taxation of costs" was a formal judicial proceeding with its own officer, rules, and appellate structure.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary defines reviewing taxation as "the re-taxing or re-examining an attorney's bill of costs by the master," triggered when the court, on application, finds that items were addressed "on some erroneous principle, or under some mistaken impression." The single source cited — Archbold's Practice of the Court of King's Bench — situates this firmly in English common law procedure, and Black's does not substantially develop the concept beyond this baseline.
No other historical dictionaries in the current Law Mind corpus provide independent entries for this term. The absence is itself informative: reviewing taxation was a term of sufficiently specialized procedural art that general legal dictionaries often folded it under broader entries for "taxation of costs" or "retaxation" rather than treating it separately. Researchers should not conclude from dictionary silence that the practice was uncommon — it was routine in courts with active masters — but rather that the vocabulary was considered subsidiary to the parent concept.
What the historical sources miss: they do not address the distinction between a review ordered by the court sua sponte versus review on a party's application, nor do they explain the procedural posture clearly enough for modern readers to understand how reviewing taxation fit within the overall appellate structure of cost disputes.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is substantially English in origin and usage. American adoption was partial and inconsistent; by the late nineteenth century, several states had moved toward statutory cost schedules that reduced the discretionary role of the taxing master and, with it, the occasion for reviewing taxation in the classical sense. The concept survives in modern federal practice under Rule 54(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and analogous state rules, but under different terminology.
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