Foreign Jurisprudence on Gaars and Their Relevance to India

The general anti-avoidance rules have been introduced in the Indian direct tax landscape recently. It will be some years before the judicial examination of the provisions and their interpretation by the courts are available as guidance to the taxpayers and the administrators. In this scenario, a scan of the legal provisions with countries with codified GAAR may provide some insights into how the provisions will eventually be interpreted by the courts. Though this is not an attempt to do a comprehensive comparison of the GAAR of various countries, this discussion aims to touch upon the significant areas and hopefully provide to the reader some straws in the wind about how the Indian GAAR provisions will be understood in the future.