EVASION OF TAX

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31621, 6 March 1968, Page 10

EVASION OF TAX

Abolition Of Time Limit

The Taxation Review Committee considers there should be no time limit on reopening assessments where taxpayers have made fraudulent, or wilful misleading, returns of income. It recommends that the law be altered accordingly. At present, there is a time limit in New Zealand of 10 years for reopening assessments in cases of evasion where false returns have been made, and no time limit where no returns have been made. The committe says that removing the time limit in cases where returns have been made would bring the treatment of such evaders into line with that of evaders who had never made returns. It would also bring the situation in New Zealand into line with that in Australia. Canada, Britain, the United States, and South Africa, where there is no time limit. “It seems anomalous that a tax evader in New Zealand should be protected by a time limit from the liability to pay tax he has evaded in the past," the committee says. Removal of the 10-year time limit would make those taxpayers inclined to falsify returns hesitate to do so.