The problems that result from the ectopic nature of income tax law are acute and resistant to cure. There are many elements of income taxation that cause problems in the international arena, including the concept of space and source of income. However, the most pervasive tax-related problem in...

Taxation is a significant cost for most businesses. The viability of many transactions and operations will depend on how they are taxed. Doubts as to tax effects of certain transactions or operations can mitigated by an advance rulings procedure. The taxpayer can place proposals before the...

In the mid 1990s, New Zealand began a project to rewrite the country’s income tax legislation. The first step of the rewrite was to reorder and reenact the 1976 Income Tax Act as the Income Tax Act 1994. Although the rewrite attempted clarify and simplify the legislation to make it more...

International aspects of New Zealand’s trust regime are driven by three things. First, operating independently of the trust regime is New Zealand’s policy to tax all income that has a New Zealand source. Secondly, there is the structural factor of the trust regime that trusts themselves are...

Historically, courts have been unwilling to adopt a purposive approach to the interpretation of tax statutes. In 1996, as part of a process of rewriting the Income Tax Act 1994, Parliament inserted a number of provisions into the Act that appeared to be calculated to require the courts to...

People have been concerned about the increasing detail of tax legislation for much of the history of tax law. Income tax law is different in kind from law in general, as it is dislocated from its subject matter, being the facts and legal relationships of business activity. This dislocation means...

“Ectopia” is a label given here to a feature of tax law that distinguishes it from most other forms of law. Income tax law is dislocated from the facts to which it relates. This dislocation leaves a gap, or “ectopia” between tax laws and the economic facts of the transactions or...

Sections 226 to 233 of the New Zealand Income Tax Act 1976 contain a special regime for the taxation of trusts. Income that is distributed by the trustee is taxed in the hands of the beneficiary, and income that is accumulate is taxed in the hands of the trustee. The regime contains a number of...

Since 1988, New Zealand has employed a full imputation system for the taxation of companies. That is, all tax paid at the corporate level can be imputed to shareholders when companies distribute dividends. The intention is that company profits should bear tax once only, not twice. Companies are...

Since the introduction of the Land and Income Assessment Act 1891 income tax has become the biggest earner of government revenues in New Zealand. Its development has been intrinsic to the creation of the modern civic infrastructure that the country now enjoys. However, it is an incomprehensible,...