Value added tax (VAT) is a relatively modern development. Designers of VAT recognized from the outset that the way in which financial institutions are remunerated creates significant difficulty when the tax is applied to their services. Administrative difficulties relate to imposing...

Exemption of financial services from Value Added Tax (VAT) is commonly accepted as being an anomaly in the New Zealand goods and services tax legislation. While exempting financial services from VAT is attractive to the legislature because it is a simple way of addressing the difficulties of...

The New Zealand Commissioner of Inland Revenue issues several kinds of statements that are in effect legal opinions. This article relates to certain public statements formerly known as “policy statements” and now called “interpretation guidelines”.The Commissioner issues interpretation...

In 2001, Parliament determined to tax income that children under sixteen derive from trusts at 33 per cent rather than at the individual rates of the children concerned. This change in policy resulted in the Taxation (Beneficiary Income of Minors, Services-Related Payments, and Remedial Matters)...

This paper addresses the issue of the several kinds of statements issued by the New Zealand Commissioner of Inland Revenue, in particular focusing on policy statements and interpretation guidelines. These statements are essentially legal opinions but unlike binding rulings, these are not...

We cannot have an income tax without a concept of income. For a number of reasons, our concept of income must be artificial. A principal reason is that income tax law generally taxes the results of legal transactions rather than their underlying economic substance, which causes a dislocation...

There are several fundamental problems with the judicial concept of income, that is, the concept of income that the courts employ for tax purposes. First, the judicial concept sees income as a flow, rather than as a gain. Secondly, as a consequence, it taxes some apparent flows that do not...

This article examines scholarly articles by Mr Robert Mcleod and Dr Geoffrey Hartly that appear earlier in this volume. The author finds that individually, the articles are very welcome contributions to tax law scholarship but together, the articles afford valuable insights into several...

The Taxation (Beneficiary Income of Minors, Service-Related Payments and Remedial Matters) Act 2001 taxes the income of most beneficiaries of trusts who are minors at 33 per cent. This measure responded to parents strategically diverting income to their children via trusts, with a view to that...

Ordinarily, double tax conventions restrict their benefits to residents of the states that are parties. Moreover where a resident of one state claims relief in respect of income derived from the other state, the claimant must ordinarily be “beneficially” entitled to the income in question....