General Anti-avoidance Rules (GAAR)

Parthasarathi Shome
Additional contact information
Parthasarathi Shome: London School of Economics

Chapter 29 in Taxation History, Theory, Law and Administration, 2021, pp 349-362 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Tax avoidance began to be targeted through a widely applicable instrument that came under the rubric, general anti-avoidance rules (GAAR). While each SAAR targets a single tax avoidance behaviour, GAAR is designed to target a broad spectrum of tax avoidance. The popularity of GAAR increased with growing disappointment among policymaking authorities regarding low tax contributions by services sector multinational enterprises (MNEs), particularly in the e-commerce sector, during the global economic crisis of 2008–2009 when revenue needs for public expenditure were at an all-time high. This feeling redoubled as SAARs were considered insufficient to capture tax avoidance comprehensively. GAAR enables wider scrutiny of intra-group MNE structures that are considered unacceptable. Cross-country GAAR legislation is found in a number of jurisdictions. This chapter reviews examples of GAAR across countries ranging from advanced economies such as Australia, the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) to the emerging economies of Brazil, China and South Africa. A case study of India is included, that explores the core tensions—between the justifiable elements and the overzealousness of the tax authorities—in the emergence of the Indian GAAR originally introduced in 2012, then put in abeyance, and finally legislated in 2017.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sptchp:978-3-030-68214-9_29

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030682149

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-68214-9_29

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Texts in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().