Governments attack tax avoidance in a number of ways. Statutory anti-avoidance rules are one means. Such rules come in two forms: specific and general. General rules potentially apply to any kind of transaction that may result in tax avoidance. Section 99 of the New Zealand income Tax Act 1976...

Among the possible responses to the problem of avoidance a country may enact a general anti-avoidance rule, couched in terms wide enough to frustrate tax planning strategies that have yet to be invented. One difficulty of general anti-avoidance rules is that they cannot be interpreted as undoing...

In his Technical Information Bulletin of February 1990 the Commissioner of Inland Revenue issued a policy statement on Section 99 of the New Zealand Income Tax Act 1976. Section 99 is a general anti-avoidance provision that voids for income tax purposes arrangements that have the purpose or...

Section 99 of the Income Tax Act 1976 provides that agreements purporting to alter the incidence of tax shall be void against the Commissioner for tax purposes. Tayles & Tayles v Commissioner of Inland Revenue [1982] 2 NZLR 726 involved a complex arrangement of trusts and partnerships. The...

The objector in Halliwell v. Commissioner of Inland Revenue 1 NZLR 363 arranged his affairs in order to minimise his tax liability. The court held that if deductions satisfy section 111 of the Land and Income Tax Act 1954 (largely the same as section 104 of the Income Tax Act 1976) they will be...

This paper comprises a transcript of the oral addresses and discussion at a colloquium that compared the general anti-avoidance rule of income tax law with the civil law doctrine of Rechtsmissbrauch (abuse of law) and similar doctrines in eight jurisdictions: Germany, Croatia, New Zealand,...

This paper sets out the text and translations of over sixty of the world's general anti-avoidance rules. General anti-avoidance rules are found in taxation statutes. Known as “GAARs”, they are perhaps the most intractable of all statutory provisions, challenging alike to policy-makers,...