The Law Society has released a position paper expressing its belief that, in recent years, there has been a tendency on the part of government to allow the rule of law in taxation to risk being eroded in the interests of making the executive more effective, and makes a number of proposals as to how the government can mitigate this. The Law Society is ‘fully supportive of the government’s objective to discourage avoidance and change the economic incentives associated with tax avoidance but is keen to ensure that opinion is not obtained by measures that erode the rule of law’.
‘The tax and rule of law position paper is critical of government when enacting tax law such as: the use of retrospective taxation, which is a clear example of a breach of the rule of law; the deliberate uncertainty created by the general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR), as the rule of law conversely implies as much certainty as possible as to what legal obligations are; and the promulgation of new rules which seek to exclude or limit access to the courts’, it said in a statement. Some of the proposals included in the paper are:
The Law Society has released a position paper expressing its belief that, in recent years, there has been a tendency on the part of government to allow the rule of law in taxation to risk being eroded in the interests of making the executive more effective, and makes a number of proposals as to how the government can mitigate this. The Law Society is ‘fully supportive of the government’s objective to discourage avoidance and change the economic incentives associated with tax avoidance but is keen to ensure that opinion is not obtained by measures that erode the rule of law’.
‘The tax and rule of law position paper is critical of government when enacting tax law such as: the use of retrospective taxation, which is a clear example of a breach of the rule of law; the deliberate uncertainty created by the general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR), as the rule of law conversely implies as much certainty as possible as to what legal obligations are; and the promulgation of new rules which seek to exclude or limit access to the courts’, it said in a statement. Some of the proposals included in the paper are: