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When It Comes to General Anti-Avoidance Rules, is Broader Better?

This paper examines the proposition that general anti-avoidance rules achieve their purpose better when drafted in broad terms. Several jurisdictions have included misuse and abuse requirements in their GAARs in order to provide certainty and a high threshold for the GAAR’s operation. Others have enumerated their GAAR to add precision and certainty to its terms. While misuse and abuse requirements and enumeration have the appearance of adding precision to an uncertain area of law, in practice this is doubtful. The general anti-avoidance provisions of four jurisdictions are compared, namely Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. This article comes to two conclusions; that adding a misuse and abuse requirement to a GAAR does not significantly alter the substance of the inquiry; and that adding further details and precisions to a GAAR does more harm than good. These two conclusions promote the main proposition of this paper, that general anti-avoidance rules work best when drafted in broad terms. The international trend is heading towards more enumerated general anti-avoidance provisions; this paper aims to counter some of the arguments in favour of that trend.