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...

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...

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...

The possible repeal of the Loss Attributing Qualifying Company (LAQC) regime in New Zealand has been raised again. This most recent announcement was canvassed in the discussion document concerning the introduction of a new limited partnership with tax transparency to facilitate venture capital...

This paper examines the role played by shams in tax avoidance in New Zealand and its relationship with the general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR) encapsulated in statutory provisions. It shows that as long as the orthodox conception of the sham is employed, there is no need for such a mechanism to...

International trust taxation in New Zealand is dominated by the settlor regime under which the claim to tax accumulated trust income on a worldwide basis depends on the fiscal residence of the settlor. A trust entity is constituted by the trustees collectively, together with their right of...

In 1944, Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest, wrote a doctoral dissertation titled The Moral Obligation of Paying Just Taxes. His dissertation summarized and analyzed 500 years of theological and philosophical debate on this topic, which identified three basic philosophical positions on the issue....

In 2003 the Australian and NZ governments enacted legislation to permit trans-Tasman companies to allocate to their shareholders franking credits and imputation credits. This legislation is known as the pro rata allocation method, and was heralded as a major improvement in trans-Tasman taxation....

With the growth of electronic commerce tax authorities were faced with the challenge of applying traditional tax principles, which have been developed in times where business comprised the delivery of physical goods and services were provided in face-to-face transactions, to cross-border...