What Is Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion ?

Legal Aspects of Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion

Two general points can be made about tax avoidance and evasion. First, tax avoidance or evasion occurs across the tax spectrum and is not peculiar to any tax type such as import taxes, stamp duties, VAT, PAYE and income tax. Secondly, legislation that addresses avoidance or evasion must necessarily be imprecise. No prescriptive set of rules exists for determining when a particular arrangement amounts to tax avoidance or evasion. This lack of precision creates uncertainty and adds to compliance costs both to the Department of Inland Revenue and the tax payer.

Definitions of Tax Mitigation Avoidance and Evasion

It is impossible to express a precise test as to whether taxpayers have avoided, evaded or merely mitigated their tax obligations. As Baragwanath J said in Miller v CIR; McDougall v CIR: What is legitimate ‘mitigation'(meaning avoidance) and what is illegitimate ‘avoidance'(meaning evasion) is in the end to be decided by the Commissioner, the Taxation Review Authority and ultimately the courts, as a matter of judgment. Please note in the above statement the words are precisely as stated in judgment. However there is a mix-up of words which have been clarified by the words in the brackets by me. Tax Mitigation (Avoidance by Planning) Taxpayers are entitled to mitigate their liability to tax and will not be vulnerable to the general anti-avoidance rules in a statute. A description of tax mitigation was given by Lord Templeman in CIR v Challenge Corporate Ltd: Income tax is mitigated by a taxpayer who reduces his income or incurs expenditure in circumstances which reduce his assessable income or entitle him to reduction in his tax liability.

Tax mitigation is, therefore, behavior which, without amounting to tax avoidance (by planning), serves to attract less liability than otherwise might have arisen. Tax Avoidance Tax evasion, as Lord Templeman has pointed out, is not mere mitigation. The term is described directly or indirectly by ï?~ Altering the incidence of any income tax ï?~ Relieving any person from liability to pay income tax ï?~ Avoiding, reducing or postponing any liability to income tax On an excessively literal interpretation, this approach could conceivably apply to mere mitigation, for example, to an individual’s decision not to work overtime, because the additional income would attract a higher rate of tax. However, a better way of approaching tax avoidance is to regard it as an arrangement that, unlike mitigation, yields results that Parliament did not intend.

In Challenge Corporation Ltd v CIR, Cooke J described the effect of the general anti-avoidance rules in these terms: [It] nullifies against the Commissioner for income tax purposes any arrangement to the extent that it has a purpose or effect of tax avoidance, unless that purpose or effect is merely incidental. Where an arrangement is void the Commissioner is given power to adjust the assessable income of any person affected by it, so as to counteract any tax advantage obtained by that person. Woodhouse J commented on the breadth of the general anti-avoidance rule in the Challenge Corporation case, noting that Parliament had taken: The deliberate decision that because the problem of definition in this elusive field cannot be met by expressly spelling out a series of detailed specifications in the statute itself, the interstices must be left for attention by the judges.

Tax Evasion Mitigation and avoidance are concepts concerned with whether or not a tax liability has arisen. With evasion, the starting point is always that a liability has arisen. The question is whether that liability has been illegitimately, even criminally been left unsatisfied. In CIR v Challenge Corporation Ltd, Lord Templeman said: Evasion occurs when the Commissioner is not informed of all the facts relevant to an assessment of tax. Innocent evasion may lead to a re-assessment. Fraudulent evasion may lead to a criminal prosecution as well as re-assessment.