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 New Zealand Commissioner of Inland Revenue issues several kinds of statements that are in effect legal opinions. These are public statements formerly known as “policy statements” and now called “interpretation guidelines”. They are not binding and are issued under the...

If “tax avoidance” means “contriving legal transactions that reduce tax in ways that are contrary to legislative policy”, then “evasion” is illegal reduction and “mitigation” is unexceptionable reduction. Apparently, tax avoidance may occur endogenously, within the existing...

This is the last in a series of four articles, in which the authors compare specific aspects of the real estate investment trust (REIT) regimes in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. Previous articles dealt separately with the REIT regimes in each of these countries. The United...

The Working Group examined the New Zealand tax system. Its recommendations included alignment of company, personal, and trust taxation rates; base broadening; an increase in goods and services tax (the New Zealand VAT); and an examination of the interface between the tax and the welfare systems....

Retrospective legislation is generally thought of as undesirable as it erodes the reliability of the law in the eyes of the citizen and therefore breaches the criterion known as the “reliance principle”. There is little unanimity between legal scholars as to why reliance is important. This...

When on the rare occasion retrospective legislation enters the statute book it is denounced from all angles as being illegal, unconstitutional, undemocratic, and contrary to natural justice and to the rule of law. The article considers the criticisms levelled at retrospective legislation, paying...

The taxation of offshore investment income is the subject of an increasing focus of legislative activity throughout the world. The reason is that offshore investment gives rise to problems of residence and of source, caused in particular by the interposition of non-natural persons between income...

Without a controlled foreign company regime, taxpayers can establish companies in other countries to trap foreign-source income or accept income diverted from domestic sources. At one extreme, a regime may cover all foreign jurisdictions. At another, it may cover only tax havens. Some countries...

Until the early 1990s New Zealand policy was to tax residents on their worldwide income and non-residents on income derived from New Zealand. The policy changed slightly in the 1990s when it became clear that taxing non-residents on income derived in New Zealand was a disincentive to foreign...