New Zealand is in general a high tax country. It is host to a thriving offshore trust industry established after an amendment to the income tax legislation in 1987. The successor to this amendment is section HC 26(1), which means that where non-residents settle income-producing property on New...

There is an active but unpublicised industry of New Zealand trustees who look after foreigners’ money. Also, taxpayers from other countries sometimes use New Zealand as a haven. Some trustees for foreign funds have a reasonably substantial presence in New Zealand; others may be single-purpose...

The Working Group examined the New Zealand tax system. Its recommendations included alignment of company, personal, and trust taxation rates; base broadening; an increase in goods and services tax (the New Zealand VAT); and an examination of the interface between the tax and the welfare systems....

Since 1995, following the Organisational Review of the Department, the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department has tried to alter the way in which staff interact with taxpayers. A core aspect of this change has been an instruction to refer to taxpayers as “customers” with “needs” rather...

The trust is the most useful device that New Zealand offers to non-residents in the field of international tax planning. So long as settlors, beneficiaries, and income are all foreign the trust is unlikely to attract New Zealand tax. The residence of the trustee has no effect on the tax benefits...

New Zealand law provides for no special tax consequences on the formation of trusts. Transfers to trusts are taxable or non-taxable pursuant to the same rules that apply in respect of transfers to other people or entities. However, because there is more likely to be an element of gift in...

Under the New Zealand Income Tax Act 1994, taxpayers aggregate their gross income and subtract allowable deductions and losses carried forward from earlier years. The result is taxable income. The statutory rules for the taxation of trusts are set out in subpart HH of the Act. There are four...

In the mid 1990s, New Zealand began a project to rewrite the country’s income tax legislation. The first step of the rewrite was to reorder and reenact the 1976 Income Tax Act as the Income Tax Act 1994. Although the rewrite attempted clarify and simplify the legislation to make it more...

International aspects of New Zealand’s trust regime are driven by three things. First, operating independently of the trust regime is New Zealand’s policy to tax all income that has a New Zealand source. Secondly, there is the structural factor of the trust regime that trusts themselves are...

Historically, courts have been unwilling to adopt a purposive approach to the interpretation of tax statutes. In 1996, as part of a process of rewriting the Income Tax Act 1994, Parliament inserted a number of provisions into the Act that appeared to be calculated to require the courts to...