Legal Interpretation of Tax Law

Series on International Taxation Volume 46

Legal Interpretation of Tax Law is a comprehensive multi-jurisdiction survey of the interpretation of the corporate income tax and VAT and GST or other general sales tax laws. As a result of the globalization of trade and business, tax departments and their external advisors are increasingly required to deal with the tax law of foreign jurisdictions. Effective consulting, whether internal or external, requires not only knowledge of tax law per se but also of how tax law is explained and interpreted by the courts of foreign jurisdictions. This book is the first to deal comparatively with tax law interpretation in economies engaged in cross-border investment at a global level.

What’s in this book:

Leading experts from fourteen jurisdictions – ranging from long-standing common law and civil law countries to emerging economies and transitional economies shifting from socialist to market systems – provide detailed analysis and commentary on such tax law topics and issues as:

• methods of tax law interpretation used in each jurisdiction;
• how the judiciary is organized in each jurisdiction as regards tax law;
• the role, if any, of the central government’s high court in providing precedent and guidelines for interpretation;
• external sources a court can consider when interpreting legislation;
• constitutional restrictions on the interpretation of legislation;
• prevalence of the General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR);
• ‘transplanted’ categories (undefined terms that are clarified through the meaning of those same terms in another law);
• the concept of ‘ordinary income’;
• the concept of ‘capital’ expenses;
• interpretation of tax treaties; interpretation of key concepts in VAT and GST law, and
• interrelation of judicial interpretation and administrative interpretation.

The introduction outlines the theoretical approaches to legal interpretation in general and gives an overview of issues and topics relevant to taxation – designed to help readers understand the jurisdictional chapters that follow. Each author pays detailed attention to such documentary elements as explanatory memoranda, administrative rulings, judicial precedents, judgments of foreign courts, legislative debates, and OECD guidelines.

How this will help you:

This book helps practitioners and academics gain insight into how tax law and its provisions, in general and in particular, are likely to be applied to different types of cross-border transactions and investments. This unmatched resource thus serves as a handbook of information to tax departments and their advisors, tax lawyers working for international law firms and accounting firms, and in-house tax professionals working for multinational companies.