Solicitors’ personal undertakings for taxation obligations and the implications for solicitors: the New Zealand experience

The Commissioner of Inland Revenue (the Commissioner) is an officer of the Crown, charged by statute with the function of care and management of taxes on behalf of the Crown. In carrying out his statutory function of collecting taxation revenue, the Commissioner is legally obliged to fulfil this role by collecting over time the highest net revenue that is practicable within the law, in relation to the resources available, the importance of promoting taxpayer compliance and the compliance cost of taxpayers. It is pursuant to the exercise of this statutory discretion that the Commissioner is authorised to enter arrangements with taxpayers or their agents for the eventual payment of taxation indebtedness. Such arrangements may include agreements between the Commissioner and taxpayer for the payment of taxation debts by instalments. Worth noting however, is that the Commissioner has recently demonstrated a willingness, not only to accept solicitors’ personal undertakings for the payment of tax debts, but to enforce them when solicitors have chosen to dishonour them

Vector field construction of Segre sets

A CR generic real analytic CR manifold M carries two families of Segre varieties and conjugate Segre varieties. We observe in this article that their complexifications give rise to two families of foliations of the complexification of M which coincide with the flow foliations induced by the complexified CR (1,0) and (0,1) vector fields tangent to M. As an application, we derive a new proof of the characterization of finite type in terms of Segre sets.Comment: Completely rewritten version, 42 pages Sujclass: Complex Variable

Taxation of gains from banking and insurance businesses in New Zealand

There has been major contest over the taxation of business income. Questions are twofold: the factual one of defining the boundaries of the business activity. Second, that of determining whether a particular gain comes within the ambit of ‘business’. Recent NZ cases have sought to apply the guiding principle - that it is not the size of the gain but the source of it that determines the taxation consequences. Logically, this principle should apply to specialist businesses such as those dealing with banking and insurance. However, the NZ Commissioner has, until 10 years ago, argued that it is the size rather than the source of the gain that is the determining criterion. And since the questions of what is the scope of the particular business activity and whether the particular gain has arisen in the course of such activity are purely factual ones, they are to be guided by the facts of each case. This article concludes that the decisions are indeed based on their particular facts. Further, it investigates how important it is for the taxpayer to ponder the strategy that is to underpin the particular business. The evidence of such strategy being in place and having the practical effect of guiding the decision making of the taxpayer company’s business activities are highly significant in determining the taxation consequences of such decision making. The consistency with which such corporate strategy or policy is formulated and implemented tends to determine their taxation consequences

Tale of the Whale

In his critique of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, A.N. Deacon accurately captures one of the main tenets if not the central theme of the book; however, he also makes several claims about the novel that do not seem to fit with the evidence seen in the actual story. For example, Deacon holds that Melville is attempting to show that the power and attributes of Moby Dick are the source, symbolically, of truth and meaning. However, this is not the impression we get when we look closely at the work itself and note Melville’s treatment of the subject. Furthermore, Deacon posits that the person of Ahab is incoherent as his outward, wild actions do not line up with the eloquent and forceful man Melville portrays through his inward character. This claim, however, ignores not only evidence from the novel but some tenets of common sense and real-life experience as well. Deacon does, however, accurately capture the central meaning and chief analogy of the book in his evaluation of Melville’s portrayal of Ahab in utter defiance and rebellion toward a Calvinistic God, or at least of the image of such a god he has projected upon the white whale. There is abundant evidence to support this argument throughout the work. Thus, though Deacon does miss the mark on some of his claims, he succeeds in pinning down the heart and soul of Melville’s classic work