Virgin Holding SA v. Commissioner of Taxation was a decision in the Federal Court of Australia in late 2008. It concerned a very important issue in the interpretation of the Australia-Swiss double taxation conventions. This was whether the term "income tax" included tax on capital gains. The...

Have the “associated person” reforms to the New Zealand Income Tax Act 2007, enacted in October 2009, gone too far? Were they necessary and should they have such wide ranging effects in the non-land taxing provisions? Much of the debate which arose from the reform to the “associated...

This article examines two broad areas of capital gains tax (CGT) design in respect of the taxation of non-residents. The first area relates to the domestic design of the tax and focuses on whether a CGT should apply to all assets held by non-residents or to some limited subset of those assets...

Tax avoidance and tax evasion cause major problems to the assessment and collection of tax and invariably attack the integrity of any tax system. Denis Healey, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer once said “The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison...

Global business does its tax planning on an international and multi-jurisdictional basis. Tax Authorities however have remained sovereign and focused on their own tax base. Current economic conditions have sharpened this focus to an acute extent. Tax authorities respond to international tax...

This article tries to find a new way through old arguments about whether or not New Zealand should have a realization-based capital gains tax. Instead of revisiting the first-principles analysis of the costs and benefits of a capital gains tax, it starts by observing that many countries have...

This article considers the nature of the relationship between domestic thin capitalization rules and the non-discrimination article in the OECD Model, with a particular focus on foreign ownership and article 24(5). In this context a question arises regarding the interpretation of article 24(5)...

On January 28, 2003 changes were made to the Commentary on Article 1 which deals with the improper use of double tax conventions. Most countries, generally speaking, seem to accept that the general anti-avoidance rules will operate and can be reconciled with the provisions of their double tax...

This paper considers New Zealand's hybrid tax credit system consisting principally of a credit system combined with exemption features in respect of certain classes of income, both of which aim to provide relief to minimise the impact of foreign income being taxed in a foreign jurisdiction as...