Tax noncompliance is a range of activities that are unfavorable to a government's tax system. This may include tax avoidance, which is tax reduction by legal means, and tax evasion which is the criminal non-payment of tax liabilities. The use of the term 'noncompliance' is used differently by different authors. Its most general use describes non-compliant behaviors with respect to different institutional rules resulting in what Edgar L. Feige calls unobserved economies. Non-compliance with fiscal rules of taxation gives rise to unreported income and a tax gap that Feige estimates to be in the neighborhood of $500 billion annually for the United States.
Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxes.
Corporation tax in the United Kingdom is a corporate tax levied in on the profits made by UK-resident companies and on the profits of entities registered overseas with permanent establishments in the UK.
Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U.S. 189 (1920), was a tax case before the United States Supreme Court that is notable for the following holdings:
Double taxation is the levying of tax by two or more jurisdictions on the same income, asset, or financial transaction.
Ultra vires is a Latin phrase used in law to describe an act which requires legal authority but is done without it. Its opposite, an act done under proper authority, is intra vires. Acts that are intra vires may equivalently be termed "valid", and those that are ultra vires termed "invalid".
Though the actual definitions vary between jurisdictions, in general, a direct tax is a tax imposed upon a person or property as distinct from a tax imposed upon a transaction, which is described as an indirect tax. The term may be used in economic and political analyses, but does not itself have any legal implications. However, in the United States, the term has special constitutional significance because of a provision in the U.S. Constitution that any direct taxes imposed by the national government be apportioned among the states on the basis of population. In the European Union direct taxation remains the sole responsibility of member states.
The Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 is an act of the Parliament of Australia. It is one of the main statutes under which income tax is calculated. The act is gradually being rewritten into the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, and new matters are generally now added to the 1997 act.
Tax shelters are any method of reducing taxable income resulting in a reduction of the payments to tax collecting entities, including state and federal governments. The methodology can vary depending on local and international tax laws.
Income taxes in Canada constitute the majority of the annual revenues of the Government of Canada, and of the governments of the Provinces of Canada. In the fiscal year ending 31 March 2018, the federal government collected just over three times more revenue from personal income taxes than it did from corporate income taxes.
A Nevada corporation is a corporation incorporated under Chapter 78 of the Nevada Revised Statutes of the U.S. state of Nevada. It is significant in United States corporate law. Nevada, like Delaware, is well known as a state that offers a corporate haven. Many major corporations are incorporated in Nevada, particularly corporations whose headquarters are located in California and other Western states.
Federal Commissioner of Taxation v Peabody was a 1994 High Court of Australia tax case concerning certain transactions made by the Peabody family business. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) sought to apply the Part IVA general anti-avoidance provisions of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936.
Arrowsmith v. Commissioner, 344 U.S. 6 (1952), is a United States Supreme Court case regarding taxation. The case involves taxpayers who liquidated a corporation in 1937. The taxpayers (properly) reported the income from the liquidation as long-term capital gains, thus obtaining a preferential tax rate. Subsequent to the liquidation in 1944, the taxpayers were required to pay a judgment arising from the affairs of the liquidated corporation. The taxpayers classified this payment as an ordinary business loss, which would allow them to take a greater deduction for the loss than would be permitted for a capital loss.
Alderson v. Commissioner, 317 F.2d 790 was a tax law case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the ruling of the United States Tax Court that an exchange of properties had not constituted a taxable sale under § 1031(a) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Salvatore v. Commissioner is an opinion from the United States Tax Court that holds that a taxpayer cannot avoid paying taxes on the sale of property by first conveying that property to someone else. This opinion was later affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. This case outlines some limitations on the "fruit-and-tree" metaphor established in Lucas v. Earl, 281 U.S. 111 (1930) and further developed in Helvering v. Horst, 311 U.S. 112 (1940). Decided in 1970, the case arose when a taxpayer tried to avoid paying capital gains tax from sale of property by giving a share in that property to her children. She then paid a gift tax, which is significantly less than the tax on the gain would have been if she had not given a share to her children.
The assignment of income doctrine is a judicial doctrine developed in United States case law by courts trying to limit tax evasion. The assignment of income doctrine seeks to "preserve the progressive rate structure of the Code by prohibiting the splitting of income among taxable entities."
Economic substance is a doctrine in the tax law of the United States under which a transaction must have both a substantial purpose aside from reduction of tax liability and an economic effect aside from the tax effect in order to be considered valid. This doctrine is used by the Internal Revenue Service to determine whether tax shelters, or strategies used to reduce tax liability, are considered "abusive." Under the doctrine, for a transaction to be respected, the transaction must change the taxpayer's economic position in a "meaningful way" apart from the Federal income tax effects, and the taxpayer must have had a "substantial purpose" for entering into the transaction, apart from the Federal income tax effects.
Tax protesters in the United States advance a number of constitutional arguments asserting that the imposition, assessment and collection of the federal income tax violates the United States Constitution. These kinds of arguments, though related to, are distinguished from statutory and administrative arguments, which presuppose the constitutionality of the income tax, as well as from general conspiracy arguments, which are based upon the proposition that the three branches of the federal government are involved together in a deliberate, on-going campaign of deception for the purpose of defrauding individuals or entities of their wealth or profits. Although constitutional challenges to U.S. tax laws are frequently directed towards the validity and effect of the Sixteenth Amendment, assertions that the income tax violates various other provisions of the Constitution have been made as well.
The step transaction doctrine is a judicial doctrine in the United States that combines a series of formally separate steps, resulting in tax treatment as a single integrated event. The doctrine is often used in combination with other doctrines, such as substance over form. The doctrine is applied to prevent tax abuse, such as tax shelters or bailing assets out of a corporation. The step transaction doctrine originated from a common law principle in Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U.S. 465 (1935), which allowed the court to recharacterize a tax-motivated transaction.
British Virgin Islands company law is primarily codified in the BVI Business Companies Act, 2004, and to a lesser extent by the Insolvency Act, 2003 and the Securities and Investment Business Act, 2010. The British Virgin Islands has approximately 30 registered companies per head of population, which is probably the highest ratio of any country in the world. Annual company registration fees provide a significant part of Government revenue in the British Virgin Islands, which accounts for the comparative lack of other taxation. Accordingly, company law forms a much more prominent part of the law of the British Virgin Islands than might otherwise be expected.
