Ejournal of Tax Research
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eJournal of Tax Research Volume 16, Number 2 February 2019 (Special Edition: Prato Comparative CGT Conference 2017) CONTENTS Editorial 266 John Taylor and Binh Tran-Nam From capital gains to tax administration, and everything in 269 between: in honour of Professor Chris Evans Kristin Hickman Capital gains tax research: an initial synthesis of the literature 278 Theuns Steyn, Sharon Smulders, Karen Stark and Ilinza Penning Tax practitioner judgements and client advocacy: the blurred 303 boundary between capital gains vs. ordinary income John Hasseldine and Darius Fatemi Reforming Australia’s 50 per cent capital gains tax discount 317 incrementally Brett Freudenberg and John Minas 340 Capital gains taxation in Canada, 1972-2017: evolution in a federal setting François Vaillancourt and Anna Kerkhoff 362 New Zealand’s ‘experience’ with capital gains taxation and policy choice lessons from Australia Kerrie Sadiq and Adrian Sawyer © School of Taxation and Business Law (Atax), UNSW Business School UNSW Sydney ISSN 1448-2398 eJournal of Tax Research EDITORS Professor John Taylor School of Taxation & Business Law (Atax), UNSW Sydney Professor Binh Tran-Nam School of Taxation & Business Law (Atax), UNSW Sydney ASSOCIATE EDITOR Dr Alexandra Evans School of Taxation & Business Law (Atax), UNSW Sydney PRODUCTION EDITOR Dr Peter Mellor Monash University and School of Taxation & Business Law (Atax), UNSW Sydney EDITORIAL BOARD Professor Robin Boadway Department of Economics, Queen’s University Professor Cynthia Coleman University of Sydney Business School Professor Graeme Cooper Faculty of Law, University of Sydney Professor Robert Deutsch School of Taxation & Business Law (Atax), UNSW Sydney Professor Chris Evans School of Taxation & Business Law (Atax), UNSW Sydney Professor Judith Freedman Faculty of Law, University of Oxford Professor Malcolm Gammie Chambers of Lord Grabiner QC, London Professor John Hasseldine Paul College of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire Professor Jeyapalan Kasipillai School of Business, Monash University Malaysia Campus Professor Rick Krever Law School, University of Western Australia Professor Charles McLure Jr Hoover Institution, Stanford University Professor Dale Pinto Curtin Business School, Curtin University Professor John Prebble Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington Professor Adrian Sawyer College of Business and Law, University of Canterbury Professor Joel Slemrod Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Professor Jeffrey Waincymer Faculty of Law, Monash University Professor Neil Warren School of Taxation & Business Law (Atax), UNSW Sydney Professor Robin Woellner School of Taxation & Business Law (Atax), UNSW Sydney eJournal of Tax Research PUBLISHER The School of Taxation & Business Law (Atax) is part of the UNSW Business School at UNSW Sydney. We are the largest tax school in any university in Australia, bringing together a team of expert academic staff with backgrounds in law, commerce, tax, accounting and economics. At Atax, we’re working towards building excellence in the tax profession, looking at tax from both a theoretical and practical perspective. EDITORS’ NOTE The eJournal of Tax Research is a refereed journal that publishes original, scholarly works on all aspects of taxation. It aims to promote timely dissemination of research and public discussion of tax-related issues, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It provides a channel for academics, researchers, practitioners, administrators, judges and policy makers to enhance their understanding and knowledge of taxation. The journal emphasises the interdisciplinary nature of taxation. SUBMISSION OF ORIGINAL MATERIAL Submission of original contributions on any topic of tax interest is welcomed, and should be sent as an email attachment (Microsoft Word format) to the Production Editor at <[email protected]>. Submission of a manuscript is taken to imply that it is an unpublished work and has not already been submitted for publication elsewhere. Potential authors are requested to follow the “Notes to Authors”, which is available from the journal's website. WEBPAGE Current and past issues of the eJournal of Tax Research are available via the journal’s website: https://www.business.unsw.edu.au/research/publications/atax-journal. eJournal of Tax Research (2019) vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 266-268 Editorial Prato Comparative CGT Conference 2017 This special issue is devoted to Professor Chris Evans (School of Taxation and Business Law (TABL), UNSW Sydney) who was instrumental in establishing the eJournal in 2003. It marks his formal retirement from UNSW Sydney, although he continues in academia with fractional appointments at UNSW Sydney and at the University of Pretoria. Chris is an outstanding, all-round tax academic who has made, and continues to make, an enormous contribution to the discipline of taxation. As an academic leader, he was the Director of the rapidly growing Australian School of Taxation (Atax) at UNSW Sydney from 2001 to 2006. As a teacher, Chris has inspired generations of undergraduate and postgraduate tax students, mainly in Australia but also through his visiting positions at universities in Austria (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Canada (University of British Columbia), New Zealand (University of Canterbury) and the UK (University of Oxford). He is co-author of two core text books in Australia: Australian Taxation Law, now in its 29th edition, and Australian CGT Handbook (formerly Cooper & Evans on CGT and now in its 10th edition). In terms of research, he is a prolific scholar who regularly publishes in quality tax journals around the world. While his research interests are diverse, his contributions to capital gains taxation and tax compliance costs are most widely acknowledged. He has successfully led Australian Research Council Linkage projects on personal income tax reform, tax complexity and AustraliaChina tax barriers, as well as conducting research for many other bodies, both national and international. In addition, he has successfully supervised many MPhil and PhD graduates in taxation. More recently, as an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria, Chris has been responsible for raising the profile of tax research in South Africa and in Africa at large. He was recently formally recognised as a “Leading International Scholar” by South Africa’s National Research Foundation. Chris has been an influential tax expert through his engagement with the tax academia, tax profession and tax authorities around the world. A sample of such roles includes: Editor in Chief of the Australian Tax Review (an A-ranked journal) from 2014 to 2016; International Research Fellow, Centre for Business Taxation, University of Oxford; Visiting Fellow at the Tax Administration Research Centre at the University of Exeter; Inaugural Chair of the AsiaPacific Branch of the UK’s Chartered Institute of Taxation; various positions with CPA Australia and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. He has acted as a consultant to the Australian Taxation Office, the Board of Taxation, the New Zealand Inland 266 eJournal of Tax Research Editorial Revenue, the World Bank and various overseas governments and government agencies. His awards are many, including: the UNSW Staff Development Award in 2004; the CPA Australia National President's Award in 2004; and the Australasian Tax Teachers Association (ATTA) Medal in 2007. To celebrate the occasion of Chris’ 65th birthday, an international conference was organised by three of his long-time colleagues, Professor Rick Krever, Dr Peter Mellor and Professor Binh Tran-Nam. Reflecting a major strand of Chris’ research interests, the conference was titled Comparative Capital Gains Taxation (CGT) and held at the Prato campus of Monash University from 26 to 28 September 2017, with very kind support from the Accounting for Social Change Research Group, QUT Business School, Queensland University of Technology, TABL, the Law School, University of Western Australia and PwC. The conference brought together a group of Chris’ colleagues and former students from Australia, Canada, Hungary, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and the US to discuss latest developments in CGT. This special issue is a collection of selected papers presented at the Prato Conference on Comparative CGT. It consists of six articles that cover both general and country-specific CGT issues. The authors are colleagues, co-authors, co-editors and former PhD students of Chris. The articles have all been subjected to the usual, rigorous peer review process. In the opening article, Kristin Hickman provides a comprehensive and critical examination of Chris’ major intellectual contributions, namely: CGT; tax compliance costs; and tax system complexity. In her cogent analysis, Kristin has succeeded not only in highlighting Chris’ contributions to the tax literature but also connecting the three strands of scholarship produced by him over the last three decades. The second article is a joint work of Theuns Steyn, Sharon Smulders, Karen Stark and Ilinza Penning, all colleagues of Chris at the University of Pretoria or the nearby University of South Africa. They innovatively apply a systematic review methodology to explore the rich diversity in the CGT literature. Their synthesis of past articles, according to year of publication, country, research design, method of analysis and themes, provides valuable information to tax researchers and tax policy makers. In the third article,