General anti-avoidance rules : enactments from the world

This paper sets out the text and translations of over sixty of the world's general anti-avoidance rules. General anti-avoidance rules are found in taxation statutes. Known as “GAARs”, they are perhaps the most intractable of all statutory provisions, challenging alike to policy-makers, drafters, legislators, advisers, tax practitioners, and citizens. Nevertheless, during the present century they have become increasingly popular among the legislatures of the world. All GAARs have fundamentally the same purpose: to prevent or to render void attempts at tax avoidance. They operate similarly, by providing that despite compliance with tax or general rules, arrangements that have the purpose of avoidance are ineffective against the tax authorities. Despite this similarity of purpose there is a remarkable range of form. GAARs are often very long, sometimes very short. They approach their goal from different angles. The GAARs set out in this paper contain examples of all different approaches. The paper thus forms a foundational resource for comparative work on GAARS and for scholars and policy-makers tasked with evaluating different approaches to drafting or improving their countries' GAARs