Nipate
Forum => Kenya Discussion => Topic started by: veritas on July 13, 2019, 06:52:37 AM
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Interesting excerpt... http://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/speeches/current-justices/frenchcj/frenchcj19may13.pdf
The area of taxation law provides a rich harvest of examples of purposeless
interpretation. In the days before GST we had sales tax and many hours of innocent
amusement were spent by courts determining whether certain goods or services fell
within, or outside, classifications attracting different rates of tax. Was an office chair,
which could be used for household purposes, able to be classed as 'a chair of a kind
used for household purposes'. So the late Justice Graham Hill and I asked ourselves
in the Full Federal Court in 1993. What were the essential characteristics of
household chairs? We were asking the question in a sales tax case but I don't think
we knew why we were asking the question. That kind of case is the kind that would
fall within the category, well known to the law, of an 'arid intellectual exercise'. It
was a small consolation that sometimes such cases would open interesting little
windows into particular aspects of industry or commerce. I sat on one such case in
the 1990s trying to decide whether a drink called 'Sub Zero Alcoholic Soda' was a
'spirituous beverage' for the purposes of a particular rate of sales tax. The drink was a
party drink which was very fashionable for a while. However, as the evidence
showed, it was a by-product of the production of Fosters Light — an alcoholic liquor
left over from a distillation process. It was mixed with fizzy water and lemon juice,
given a snappy name and marketed as a product for the younger social sophisticate.
:lol: