This article, which is based on the inaugral address given at the IBFD Tax Lecture Series in Beijing, China, examines the basic foundations and nature of income tax law before going on to offer a unifying theory of taxation law. Income tax law is notoriously complex for a range of reasons. One...

The trust is the most useful device that New Zealand offers to non-residents in the field of international tax planning. So long as settlors, beneficiaries, and income are all foreign the trust is unlikely to attract New Zealand tax. The residence of the trustee has no effect on the tax benefits...

New Zealand law provides for no special tax consequences on the formation of trusts. Transfers to trusts are taxable or non-taxable pursuant to the same rules that apply in respect of transfers to other people or entities. However, because there is more likely to be an element of gift in...

There are several varieties of legislative or executive action that are on occasion labelled tax simplification. The article develops an analytical framework, the purpose of which is to examine to what extent certain varieties of simplification can be expected to succeed. The analysis involves...

In the mid 1990s, New Zealand began a project to rewrite the country’s income tax legislation. The first step of the rewrite was to reorder and reenact the 1976 Income Tax Act as the Income Tax Act 1994. Although the rewrite attempted clarify and simplify the legislation to make it more...

“Ectopia” is a label given here to a feature of tax law that distinguishes it from most other forms of law. Income tax law is dislocated from the facts to which it relates. This dislocation leaves a gap, or “ectopia” between tax laws and the economic facts of the transactions or...

Since the introduction of the Land and Income Assessment Act 1891 income tax has become the biggest earner of government revenues in New Zealand. Its development has been intrinsic to the creation of the modern civic infrastructure that the country now enjoys. However, it is an incomprehensible,...

As part of systems of tax law, general anti-avoidance rules frustrate transactions that contrive to avoid tax. Avoidance transactions adhere to the strict letter of the law while flouting or exploiting its policy. Statutory general anti-avoidance rules are found in many countries in Europe and...

The general charging provisions of the Income Tax Act 1976 purport to tax all assessable income. Sections 226 to 233 of the Act lay down a code for the taxation of the income of trustees and beneficiaries. Is this code an exhaustive statement of the assessability of trust income over-riding pro...

The English version of this paper can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1473612 The article compares the general anti-avoidance rule of income tax law with the civil law doctrine of abuse of law (Rechtsmissbrauch, abus de droit) in eight jurisdictions: Germany, Croatia, New Zealand,...