Title: Legislated Interpretation and Tax Avoidance in Canadian Income Tax Law
Abstract: Predictable statutory interpretation helps ensure the reliable operation of contemporary systems of taxation. Tax liabilities that are not clearly expressed and articulated by legislatures lead to over-reliance on litigation as a means to enforce and clarify legislative intent. For this reason, modern legislatures continually amend and draft new tax provisions, reformulating existing rules and introducing new ones to address ever-changing social and economic environments. Moreover, legislatures also respond with amendments directed at judicial decisions with which they disagree, as well as the transactions and arrangements at issue in these cases. As these amended and new rules are then subject to application and interpretation by revenue departments, taxpayers, tax advisors, and the courts, all of which legislatures may respond to through further subsequent amendments, tax legislation at any given time can be regarded as the recursive product of an ongoing dialogue.