A Study of Substance-over-Form Principle in Tax Law

• Main Authors: Kuen-Yang Lin, 林坤陽
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/54085566881163499357

碩士 === 逢甲大學 === 經營管理碩士在職專班 === 94 === According to the rule 19 of Constitute, property right is citizens’ basic right. However, property right is also a conditional and limited one. On the one hand, the government is legitimated to take people’s property from tax imposition. On the other hand, people are allowed to adopt legislative methods to avoid the heavier taxation by executing their legal right of property-scheming. Since the legislation of laws represents the spirit of justice and equity, tax laws should also follow the principle of tax-equity. Consequently, the purpose of substance-over-form principle is to help realize tax-equity. Substance-over-form principle is usually used to explain the appropriateness of Tax Law in order to prevent tax-avoidance. However, there haven’t been concrete and literal regulations about the general norms of substance-over-form principle. As a result, it is easily interpreted arbitrarily by revenue service offices to infringe people’s property right. Bearing this consideration, the study aims to focus on how to make legislation in light of substance-over-form principle for both citizens and revenue service offices to act upon. First, the study introduces the foreign legislations related to substance-over-form principle. The reviewed legislation examples include the general principles of taxation in Germany, Income Tax Law, Corporation Tax Law, Succession Law in Japan, and Internal Revenue Code of USA. The study further compares the relevant cases and the court’s judgments as our legislation references. As for the domestic legal practices about substance-over-form principle, the study illustrates the explanations from the grand justice council and individual tax laws. From these legal provisions, several lation types are differentiated. Finally, the study attempted to reconstruct legislation types regarding substance-over-form principle, and map out the detailed legislative contents based on substance-over-form principle.