During the 1980s a major thrust of the European Community (now the European Union) effort and policy was towards the creation of a single market by the early 1990s. Issues that were most important regarding tax law were that of mergers and parent and subsidiaries. The harmonisation process is...

Tax simplification is a subject that causes great debate throughout the OECD. The general basis for simplification programmes is to identify factors that cause taxation to be complex, followed by an attempt to minimise the effects of these factors. Through the 1980s New Zealand engaged in one of...

Section 67 of the Income Tax Act 1976 taxes as income certain gains on the sale of land that would ordinarily be classed as capital. Several proposals were made to repeal the section or severely to limit its effect. The article argues that the section contains a number of flaws, though none that...

New Zealand has concluded double tax agreements with 24 countries. Double tax conventions are brought into effect by Orders in Council, a form of subordinate legislation. They are also incorporated in legislation by reference under section 294 of the New Zealand Income Tax Act 1976, which states...

The passage of the Land and Income Assessment Act 1891 saw the introduction of income tax in New Zealand. Since then there have been many changes to the regime but none have softened the reputation of income tax law as being the most complicated and internally inconsistent of all laws. There are...

Tax treaties that have been concluded by common law countries follow the basic structure, concepts, and language of model tax conventions that were promulgated by the OECD in 1963 and 1977. Thus, clauses from most treaties concluded by most common law countries are equally suitable as...

The deregulation that has been so much a feature of the New Zealand economy since the mid 1980s has been particularly evident in the banking industry. This development has seen the emergence of many new practices, practices that have often emerged so fast that there is still an imperfect...

A non-recourse loan is one made on terms where the borrower has no personal obligation to pay except from an identified fund of assets. It is usual for all or most of the assets in the fund to be subject to a charge in favour of the lender. This article considers the nature of the relationship...

Several major changes in tax law were annouced in the 1991 Budget. These included changing the way dividends between companies were addressed and relaxing non-resident withholding tax on interest. The Government stated it would consider instituting an ongoing program of review of existing...

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...