Have the “associated person” reforms to the New Zealand Income Tax Act 2007, enacted in October 2009, gone too far? Were they necessary and should they have such wide ranging effects in the non-land taxing provisions? Much of the debate which arose from the reform to the “associated...

This article considers the issue of whether or not New Zealand trustees must be recognized as valid parties in New Zealand's treaty network by exploring the various approaches that may be adopted in the interpretation of tax treaties and the diverging constructions of the residence article.New...

Virgin Holding SA v. Commissioner of Taxation was a decision in the Federal Court of Australia in late 2008. It concerned a very important issue in the interpretation of the Australia-Swiss double taxation conventions. This was whether the term "income tax" included tax on capital gains. The...

This article considers the significance of the term "beneficial ownership" in Articles 10, 11 and 12 of the OECD Model Double Tax Convention (“the Model”), and looks at features of commonly used cross-border structures (structured finance and holding companies) by way of practical background...

This article examines the potential conflict between thin capitalization rules and the OECD Model article on non-discrimination using the New Zealand regime exempli gratia. It is discriminatory to impose a higher tax burden on an enterprise funded with foreign capital. Yet that is the basis for...

This article begins by examining the relationship between thin capitalisation rules and double tax treaties. After examining the potential for a fundamental conflict in this area it looks at the OECD's attempts to resolve the problem (in section 2). In sections 3 and 4, the article examines the...

Even though the New Zealand courts have been interpreting this legislation for over 130 years, there is no doubt that applying the anti-avoidance rules is a difficult task. This is why it is common for judges to come to different conclusions or even arrive at the same conclusion through a...

In this paper it is controversially suggested that international tax law is broader than the traditional view of most academics. In addition to domestic laws that cover cross-border transactions and double taxation agreements (or their multilateral counterparts) there is a special consensus...

This article attempts to establish a justification for the taxation of income earned by highly digitalised businesses in the source or market jurisdiction. The article explains why this theoretical question is such an important issue in international tax. The proposition put forward in this...