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...

The report of the Consultative Committee on the taxation of the life assurance industry was published on 4 September 1989. The report promotes fiscal neutrality by suggesting that the taxation of investment via life assurance should conform as closely as possible to the taxation of other forms...

This document is the first part of the report on the introduction of international tax measures by the Consultative Committee on Full Imputation and International Tax Reform. The report sets out the major building blocks of the regime recommended by the committee following its review of the...

LexisNexis New Zealand has kindly consented to the classic text, John Prebble The Taxation of Property Transactions (1985) being posted on the SSRN website. Statutory references are to sections as numbered in the Income Tax Act 1976, but apart from re-numbering and reorganisation, the law in the...

In 1987, New Zealand taxpayers could avoid tax by establishing foreign corporations in which they held a controlling shareholding in low tax jurisdictions. This avoidance could occur in two ways. First, through using the foreign corporation to intercept passive income, such as interest or...

Trusts fit uneasily into any tax system. The beneficiary should be taxed on any trust income received; yet the trustee also receives income that is amenable to taxation. It would not be fair for the income to be taxed to both the beneficiary and the trustee, yet neither should the trustee escape...