The Privy Council and the Australasian Anti-Avoidance Rules

Abstract

This article examines the 13 cases (the first decided in 1900, the last in 2005) in which the Privy Council was called upon to interpret the general anti-avoidance rules contained in Australian and New Zealand taxing statutes. These cases lend weight to the theory that the idea of tax avoidance is not susceptible to coherent explication and that rules against it are therefore inescapably problematic. The cases also suggest, however, that having a general anti-avoidance rule might nonetheless be better than not having one.