IRD wins again

Hamish Fletcher at NZ Herald reports:

International investors could be scared off by a Court of Appeal decision yesterday which saw Inland Revenue notch up another big win, say tax specialists.

Alesco New Zealand lost another leg of its stoush with the IRD yesterday over whether a funding structure used to buy two other companies was a tax avoidance arrangement.

The amount at issue in the Alesco case is $8.6 million, but yesterday’s judgment could have implications for other tax avoidance disputes with the IRD where hundreds of millions of dollars are estimated to be at stake.

Decisions in these cases were awaiting the outcome of the Alesco litigation, the Court of Appeal said.

University of Auckland Business School senior tax law lecturer Mark Keating called yesterday’s decision a “slam-dunk” for the IRD.

“If there’s an imaginary line that you cross between tax planning and tax avoidance, then IRD have been taking cases that go closer and closer to that line,” Keating said.

“The [corporate] taxpaying community are basically waiting for a case where the IRD overstretch and there were a number of people who hoped and believed that Alesco would be that case.”

Ernst & Young senior tax partner Jo Doolan said yesterday’s judgment was an “alarming result”.

“It reinforces the feeling of many inbound investing corporates that the NZ tax environment is too uncertain. It may discourage them from continuing to do business here,” she said.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t accept the argument that companies will not invest here if they are not allowed to avoid paying tax.

I’m all in favour of lower tax rates to encourage investment. But I’m also in favour of plugging tax loopholes.

I think it is commendable that IRD has been very effective in making sure companies don’t avoid paying tax purely through use of artificial mechanisms that have no commercial basis except tax avoidance. They managed to get the banks to cough up an extra billion dollars or so, and I understand APN (owners of the Herald) are also in court and fighting over $50 million or so of disputed tax.

The best tax system is low rates, broad base and few loopholes.