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Tax Administration in and beyond the Canadian context

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Kimberley Brooks discusses the importance of law in tax, tax administration in the Canadian context, and what countries can learn about tax administration from each other.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 21, 2024

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This video video features a discussion about the importance of understanding law in the context of taxation from a legal practitioner's perspective. It emphasizes the need for a well-defined legal framework that clarifies the obligations of both taxpayers and the state, fostering confidence in the tax system. However, it also acknowledges that taxation operates effectively in many contexts without strict legal frameworks, particularly in tax administration, which is highlighted as a dynamic area involving human interactions between taxpayers and revenue officials.

The speaker outlines key components of tax administration, such as tax filing processes, withholding obligations, audit procedures, collection methods, and penalties for non-compliance, noting that these can vary significantly across different countries. They reflect on the informal nature of tax administration in some places, like Canada, compared to more regulated systems, suggesting ongoing debates among tax scholars about the efficacy of these approaches.

An interesting point raised includes the globalization of tax practices and the interactions within a small, specialized community of tax law experts who exchange ideas internationally. This video video also references a notable book that contrasts the Chinese tax administration system with those in Western countries, arguing that the effectiveness of the Chinese system is rooted in human practices rather than a rich legal framework.

Ultimately, the text posits that while formal legal structures are essential, the effectiveness of tax administration may also hinge on informal human dynamics and practices, urging legal scholars to broaden their definitions of law to include these non-traditional elements.

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You know, I'm a, I'm a lawyer by training,

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and so of course my answer is that it's vitally important

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to tax, to think about law in the context of tax.

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And, and I,

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and I think the reason why I say that I,

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I'm gonna start there and then

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I'm gonna back up from that answer.

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But the reason why I say that is, you know, you wanna see,

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I think in a kind of rule of law context,

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a well-defined legal framework that helps you understand,

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you know, what the nature of the state obligations are

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to a taxpayer and the taxpayer's obligations are to a state.

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And, and a legal framing,

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I think gives you confidence in the system.

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It adds some, I think, clarity in terms of

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what taxpayers can expect to be, you know, the kind

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of determination of their legal and other liabilities.

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And, and again, it gives the state the confidence

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that they have the right tools to be able

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to enforce those obligations.

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All of that said, I think, you know, we know lots

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of things happen in the world without the kind of,

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legal framework that we might, as lawyers hope to see.

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And in many cases, certainly not all,

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but in many cases work fabulously well.

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And so, so one of, one of the things that I think is a,

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is a really interesting place to think about it in terms of

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how, taxation can work even in the space

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where there's not some formal legal expression, is

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to think a little bit about tax administration.

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'cause that is a place where I think there are very

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explicit, there are lots of human actors,

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and there, there are very explicit opportunities, I think

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for people, both taxpayers

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and often revenue officials to kind of develop practices

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that, you know, legal plurals might say are kind

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of essentially expressions of law,

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but certainly don't have that legal framework

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that you might think of as more typical of law.

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So I'll, I'll give you kind of the, a sort

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of conventional walkthrough about how we think about what,

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what, what constitutes the component parts

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of tax administration and,

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and different countries do this differently in, in terms

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of the legal framework.

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So in some countries, you know, they,

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you actually see a separate tax administration law

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where they set out the various obligations

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and expectations, of, of taxpayers

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and of government in terms of the

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administration of the system.

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Other systems like Canada,

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those rules are just integrated into our standard tax laws.

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And not, and not distinct, but,

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but I think we, you know, tax scholars

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and tax administrators would agree probably

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that there are some component parts to it.

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There's, there's usually a set of rules

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and practices around the tax filing experience.

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So what we expect from people when to report what needs

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to be reported and those kinds of things,

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there are usually a range of things

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around the withholding obligations.

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So, you know, those are often on third parties.

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What you have to kind of keep back,

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the most typical example would be the kinds of things

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that your employer keeps back from your salary.

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So if you have a salary of a hundred dollars,

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you actually only get 75 of it.

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And the, the government immediately is sort

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of transferring 25 of it.

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Uh, the, the employer story is transferring 25 of it

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to the government directly as a withholding obligation.

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There are rules that deal with the audit process.

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So what happens in terms of you've filed a tax return,

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or there's been a assessment process

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that your government has instigated,

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and now there's a dispute about, you know,

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whether or not you've done the right thing.

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So they're gonna check and

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see if you've done the right thing.

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The government might come back to you

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and say, look, Sam, you know, we've discovered

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that we disagree with you when you think you owe

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this, we think you owe this.

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And so then you have to have an appeals process just

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as a matter of fairness to let you kind of take issue,

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I think with some of the things that the government might be

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suggesting are different than

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what it is that you've reported.

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Uh, there's a collection process, so now we've all agreed,

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or at least it's been imposed on you what the kind

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of legal obligation is.

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How do we get it from you?

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So there have to be rules that talk a little bit about that.

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And then there are rules that talk about the penalties

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that might get imposed because someone has failed

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to file accurately

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or has failed to provide,

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the amount owing once a collection proceeding has commenced.

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And so every country would have a set of, of rules

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that would address each of those things,

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or at least a set of practices, that you could discern

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that you might kind of categorize

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or characterize under those broad headings.

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I think it's a super interesting question.

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And so, I mean, I love this, I love this topic

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and I think this is fascinating.

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How we transfer ideas around the world is one

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of the most interesting legal questions I think you

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can, ask.

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And I think it kind of motivates a lot of, a lot of us

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who care about comparativism

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and the kind of work that we do.

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And so, you know, this is just an illustration of that,

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but I think it's a particularly interesting one

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because, you know, taxes,

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I like I'm loathe to say this 'cause as you know, I love it,

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but tax is a kind of esoteric subject in some ways.

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And so one of the really fun things about it is it's a

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pretty small group of people who care about

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and study in particular tax laws

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and who think about it in its kind of international context.

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And so, you know, it's interesting when you start

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to explore, one of the things I find fascinating is

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that the group of people is so small

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that you often know each other.

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I mean, it's that small, a human network.

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And so you're kind of constantly trading ideas about,

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in this country we do it this way in terms

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of tax administration in that country, we do it this way.

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And that's a good idea. I

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wonder if we should take that idea.

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And so there's lots of conversations about

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how we transfer legal ideas, how we transfer tax practices.

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And so, so let me give you a bit more concretely, Sam,

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maybe just go through those four

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or five different, types of rules that,

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that, that govern.

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I think what you might think of as tax administration.

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They give you a couple of concrete examples about

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maybe how they differ.

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So, so if you think for example about, re you know,

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filing returns almost every country Canada would be a good

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example, has a kind of similar practice, right?

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There's a deadline, usually it's annual,

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you file your return, but then there's lots

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of variations across different countries in terms

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of do you have to file returns related to, for example,

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property that you might own in another jurisdiction.

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And so, you know, that might not even be connected

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to your tax liability, but it is a transparency

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and potentially over time,

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You know, an enforcement, tool

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that some governments use more actively than others.

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So that's kind of fun. And there are differences there,

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there are differences in terms of the, the audit practices.

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So in Canada for example, there's not a lot

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of legal framework about audit practices.

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It's relatively informal.

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Usually as a taxpayer, if you're disputing, you know,

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there's been a dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency

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about how much you might owe.

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You might sit down with an auditor

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and kind of, they'll say what they see

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and you explain why you did it the way you did it,

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and it kind of, you know, there's kind of a conversation.

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And then at the end of the day,

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the auditor will take a position about it.

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There are other systems,

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this would be much more common in civil law systems

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that are very, that actually have a whole set

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of regulations about how those audit

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processes are gonna work.

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And so when we get together, as, you know, people

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who care about tax administration in different countries,

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we fight about which is better?

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Is it better to have it be more informal and ranging,

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or is it better to have it more scripted,

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and detailed in terms of the legal framework,

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the appeals processes are quite

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different in different countries.

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So how many stages of appeals there are?

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So for example, in Canada, we, you know,

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you have an audit process

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and then if you don't like the outcome as the taxpayer of

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that process, you can appeal.

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And the appeals and administrative appeals still

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internal to our system.

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And so you get a chance to make your case again

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to another person connected to the appeals branch.

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Uh, but again, still just in the, in the kind of, you know,

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tax administration function.

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And then only then if you continue to dispute it,

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does it kick up to the court system.

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But when it kicks up to the court system in Canada,

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it kicks up to a specialized court, right?

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The tax court of Canada,

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and then you're onto the general appeal levels,

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federal Court of appeal, Supreme Court of Canada.

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But other countries don't do it that way.

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Some countries don't have specialized administrative bodies

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or they don't have specialized tax courts.

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And so again, another thing we talk about when we talk about

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what systems are better is, you know, is it better

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to have a specialized adjudicate of court

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or is it actually better to have generalists sort

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of taking a look at these kinds of issues?

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And different countries, again, do it differently.

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Um, same thing with collections.

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There's lots of different rules around collections.

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What you can see is when you can seize it,

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what procedural rights are in place

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before you seize something.

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Um, those are, as you can imagine, they kind

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of turn on the underlying property laws

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or civil procedure laws of a jurisdiction.

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And so Canada might do something quite different

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before it seizes, for example,

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someone's principal residence than another country might do,

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before they seize it or maybe they can't seize it,

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or maybe they've exempted the kind

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of principal residence from being, you know, subject

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to seizure by the,

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by the revenue authority in that jurisdiction.

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And then penalties, as you can imagine, wild differences

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around the world about what's subject to penalties,

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how significant the penalties are,

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how regularly they're enforced,

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what procedural mechanisms you need to enforce them.

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And so tax administration is fascinating in part

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because there is so much variation in the ways countries,

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in the way countries do it.

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And when you first learn your own system as a student,

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at least I'll speak for myself,

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It just seems like your system is right.

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Like you learn it and you think, yeah,

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our system makes perfect sense.

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Those rules are great. I

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understand why they work the way they do.

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And, and you know, you can have disputes.

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I I would frame them even at the margins

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where taxpayers will say, well, this part isn't fair,

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or that part's not fair, or the government will say,

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this part needs to lean more heavily in our favor or not.

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But then you start seeing, you know, other systems

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around the world and you realize

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how wildly different those systems can look and you,

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and it gets really fascinating at that point.

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So that's great. It ki it's a, it's a quote

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and I love this book from,

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WWE who's like just brilliant.

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I mean, he's such a brilliant scholar

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and he did this great book on on,

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tax administration looking at the kind of Chinese case and,

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and you know, because he's got a Canadian context, he's,

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he's, he's spent a lot of time here as a colleague

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of mine, at UBC and in Canada.

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And he, you know, he, he has an insider outsider view,

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you know, he understands the Chinese system

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'cause worked with it and been there,

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but he also sees it kind of, you know, from a distance.

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And, and the book is great

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because one of his main observations is, you know,

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the Chinese system works well on the tax administration

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side,

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and it has an entirely different approach to these kinds

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of tax administration, let's call them norms to

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what you might see in Canada

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and some other countries that have tax systems like Canada.

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The UK would be, you know, similar

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and the US would be similar.

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Australia, we'd have relatively comparable systems.

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And what he observes when he looks at it is the Chinese

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system works not

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because of the, the richness of the legal framework,

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but I think rather because, of the kind

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of human dynamics informed by the practices

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of tax administrators in China

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and their interaction with taxpayers there, you know,

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in a way that lots of people

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who study tax administration from one of the,

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the systems I described at the beginning,

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like the UK Canada would never predict would

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be feasible or possible.

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And so the kind of claim is, you know, maybe our kind

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of preoccupation

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as scholars from those countries about getting the legal

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framework right and fussing over, you know, this word

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or that word in terms of our legislation.

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Maybe we're just off

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and there are in fact other really quite effective ways

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that we shouldn't, you know, discount

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of ending up in very much the same place.

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Um, but but with a different mechanism for getting there,

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the kind of much more human interaction

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rooted type of mechanism.

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And so, so he, you know, with,

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I think it's a provocative statement

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that law's an an essential instrument, but I, but

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but one that sure, should, should spark those of us

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who are used to dealing in law to stop

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and think about the ways in which maybe our own, kind

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of bias because of our areas of study have led us to kind

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of pre conclude what's necessary.

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And, and I found that really intriguing about his book

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and I, you know, if, if, anyone listening

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to this hasn't taken a look at it, they sure should.

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It's fascinating. I had the pleasure as, as sort of part

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of how I spent some of my career to, to spend a bit

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of time in the faculty of law McGill.

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And, and I think they do a brilliant job I think of, of kind

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of raising for us these questions about, you know,

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legal pluralism, which in their most interesting expression,

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I think ask us, you know, to see law in places

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that we would sometimes maybe think of them as practices.

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Like I'm, you know, I'm, there's,

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there's sophisticated work on this

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and I'm not, I'm not very sophisticated, Sam, but I,

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but I sort of oversimplify it.

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I would say, you know, we can do, we can kind

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of head both directions I think with the sort of challenge

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that way offers us.

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And one of them is to say maybe those of us

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who care about law really, are inclined

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to think it's more important than it is.

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And that's part of how we sort of reify our own areas

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of expertise and study and we should be cautious.

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I think about, about how we kind of frame up its importance.

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And, and, and that's kind of the,

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that's kinda the conversation we were having, I think out

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of the last question in, in the sort of statement that

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that way makes about, you know,

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lobbying an ential instrument.

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On the other hand, there's a kind of another way

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of orienting to it, which is to say,

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actually maybe it's just that we're over obsessed

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with law on the books in some sense

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and the legal framework in terms

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of the legislative expression,

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and actually as legal scholars, we ought to be constructing

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all of these kind of human practices that we can see

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that are predictable as a form of law, right?

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And, and so, you know, in, in the,

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in the most challenging version of it, I had a colleague,

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at McGill who's, who's headed off now

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to an Australian institution,

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but who, you know, who would sort of provocatively say,

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look, art is a form of law like that there are, you know,

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there are all these, that, that what we understand

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to be law needs to be blown out in much bigger ways.

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And we need to be able to kind

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of construct our analytical frames in a way

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that lets us see the kinds of practices

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that way identifies in his book as in fact law.

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Like not law is not ential, it is in fact all

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that he identifies.

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And the limit we have as legal scholars is thinking

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that somehow there is something we've defined as law

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that can only be seen in a kind of,

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conventional expression of it,

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whether it's a legislative expression,

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a regulatory expression, a court expression,

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but that the human practices themselves predictable

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as they sometimes become, are also a kind of form of law.

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And so as a, as a, as a provocative curiosity, I enjoy,

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I think thinking about those questions.

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And so, and,

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and where it leads you is to ask,

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I think diff about different possible solutions to some

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of the challenges that we try to then fix

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through legal expression.

Understanding Tax Law and Administration Dynamics

00:00:00 - You know, I'm a, I'm a lawyer by training, and so of course my answer is that it's vitally important to tax, to think about law in the context of tax. And, and I, and I think the reason why I say that I, I'm gonna start there and then I'm gonna back up from that answer. But the reason why I say that is, you know, you wanna see, I think in a kind of rule of law context, a well-defined legal framework that helps you understand, you know, what the nature of the state obligations are to a taxpayer and the taxpayer's obligations are to a state. And, and a legal framing,
00:00:33 - It adds some, I think, clarity in terms of what taxpayers can expect to be, you know, the kind of determination of their legal and other liabilities. And, and again, it gives the state the confidence that they have the right tools to be able to enforce those obligations. All of that said, I think, you know, we know lots of things happen in the world without the kind of, legal framework that we might, as lawyers hope to see. And in many cases, certainly not all,
00:01:04 - And so, so one of, one of the things that I think is a, is a really interesting place to think about it in terms of how, taxation can work even in the space where there's not some formal legal expression, is to think a little bit about tax administration. 'cause that is a place where I think there are very explicit, there are lots of human actors, and there, there are very explicit opportunities, I think for people, both taxpayers and often revenue officials to kind of develop practices
00:01:35 - of essentially expressions of law, but certainly don't have that legal framework that you might think of as more typical of law. So I'll, I'll give you kind of the, a sort of conventional walkthrough about how we think about what, what, what constitutes the component parts of tax administration and, and different countries do this differently in, in terms of the legal framework. So in some countries, you know, they, you actually see a separate tax administration law where they set out the various obligations and expectations, of, of taxpayers
00:02:04 - administration of the system. Other systems like Canada, those rules are just integrated into our standard tax laws. And not, and not distinct, but, but I think we, you know, tax scholars and tax administrators would agree probably that there are some component parts to it. There's, there's usually a set of rules and practices around the tax filing experience. So what we expect from people when to report what needs to be reported and those kinds of things, there are usually a range of things around the withholding obligations. So, you know, those are often on third parties. What you have to kind of keep back,
00:02:37 - that your employer keeps back from your salary. So if you have a salary of a hundred dollars, you actually only get 75 of it. And the, the government immediately is sort of transferring 25 of it. the, the employer story is transferring 25 of it to the government directly as a withholding obligation. There are rules that deal with the audit process. So what happens in terms of you've filed a tax return, or there's been a assessment process that your government has instigated, and now there's a dispute about, you know,

Understanding Tax Obligations and Appeals Process

00:03:07 - So they're gonna check and see if you've done the right thing. The government might come back to you and say, look, Sam, you know, we've discovered that we disagree with you when you think you owe this, we think you owe this. And so then you have to have an appeals process just as a matter of fairness to let you kind of take issue, I think with some of the things that the government might be suggesting are different than what it is that you've reported. there's a collection process, so now we've all agreed, or at least it's been imposed on you what the kind of legal obligation is. How do we get it from you? So there have to be rules that talk a little bit about that.
00:03:40 - that might get imposed because someone has failed to file accurately or has failed to provide, the amount owing once a collection proceeding has commenced. And so every country would have a set of, of rules that would address each of those things, or at least a set of practices, that you could discern that you might kind of categorize or characterize under those broad headings. I think it's a super interesting question. And so, I mean, I love this, I love this topic and I think this is fascinating.
00:04:11 - of the most interesting legal questions I think you can, ask. And I think it kind of motivates a lot of, a lot of us who care about comparativism and the kind of work that we do. And so, you know, this is just an illustration of that, but I think it's a particularly interesting one because, you know, taxes, I like I'm loathe to say this 'cause as you know, I love it, but tax is a kind of esoteric subject in some ways. And so one of the really fun things about it is it's a
00:04:42 - and study in particular tax laws and who think about it in its kind of international context. And so, you know, it's interesting when you start to explore, one of the things I find fascinating is that the group of people is so small that you often know each other. I mean, it's that small, a human network. And so you're kind of constantly trading ideas about, in this country we do it this way in terms of tax administration in that country, we do it this way. And that's a good idea. I wonder if we should take that idea. And so there's lots of conversations about
00:05:13 - And so, so let me give you a bit more concretely, Sam, maybe just go through those four or five different, types of rules that, that, that govern. I think what you might think of as tax administration. They give you a couple of concrete examples about maybe how they differ. So, so if you think for example about, re you know, filing returns almost every country Canada would be a good example, has a kind of similar practice, right? There's a deadline, usually it's annual, you file your return, but then there's lots
00:05:42 - of do you have to file returns related to, for example, property that you might own in another jurisdiction. And so, you know, that might not even be connected to your tax liability, but it is a transparency and potentially over time, You know, an enforcement, tool that some governments use more actively than others. So that's kind of fun. And there are differences there, there are differences in terms of the, the audit practices. So in Canada for example, there's not a lot of legal framework about audit practices.

Tax Disputes and Administration Across Countries

00:06:12 - Usually as a taxpayer, if you're disputing, you know, there's been a dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency about how much you might owe. You might sit down with an auditor and kind of, they'll say what they see and you explain why you did it the way you did it, and it kind of, you know, there's kind of a conversation. And then at the end of the day, the auditor will take a position about it. There are other systems, this would be much more common in civil law systems that are very, that actually have a whole set of regulations about how those audit processes are gonna work. And so when we get together, as, you know, people
00:06:45 - we fight about which is better? Is it better to have it be more informal and ranging, or is it better to have it more scripted, and detailed in terms of the legal framework, the appeals processes are quite different in different countries. So how many stages of appeals there are? So for example, in Canada, we, you know, you have an audit process and then if you don't like the outcome as the taxpayer of that process, you can appeal. And the appeals and administrative appeals still internal to our system. And so you get a chance to make your case again
00:07:16 - but again, still just in the, in the kind of, you know, tax administration function. And then only then if you continue to dispute it, does it kick up to the court system. But when it kicks up to the court system in Canada, it kicks up to a specialized court, right? The tax court of Canada, and then you're onto the general appeal levels, federal Court of appeal, Supreme Court of Canada. But other countries don't do it that way. Some countries don't have specialized administrative bodies or they don't have specialized tax courts. And so again, another thing we talk about when we talk about what systems are better is, you know, is it better
00:07:49 - or is it actually better to have generalists sort of taking a look at these kinds of issues? And different countries, again, do it differently. same thing with collections. There's lots of different rules around collections. What you can see is when you can seize it, what procedural rights are in place before you seize something. those are, as you can imagine, they kind of turn on the underlying property laws or civil procedure laws of a jurisdiction. And so Canada might do something quite different before it seizes, for example, someone's principal residence than another country might do,
00:08:22 - or maybe they've exempted the kind of principal residence from being, you know, subject to seizure by the, by the revenue authority in that jurisdiction. And then penalties, as you can imagine, wild differences around the world about what's subject to penalties, how significant the penalties are, how regularly they're enforced, what procedural mechanisms you need to enforce them. And so tax administration is fascinating in part because there is so much variation in the ways countries, in the way countries do it.
00:08:53 - at least I'll speak for myself, It just seems like your system is right. Like you learn it and you think, yeah, our system makes perfect sense. Those rules are great. I understand why they work the way they do. And, and you know, you can have disputes. I I would frame them even at the margins where taxpayers will say, well, this part isn't fair, or that part's not fair, or the government will say, this part needs to lean more heavily in our favor or not. But then you start seeing, you know, other systems around the world and you realize how wildly different those systems can look and you,

Exploring Tax Administration in China and Beyond

00:09:23 - So that's great. It ki it's a, it's a quote and I love this book from, WWE who's like just brilliant. I mean, he's such a brilliant scholar and he did this great book on on, tax administration looking at the kind of Chinese case and, and you know, because he's got a Canadian context, he's, he's, he's spent a lot of time here as a colleague of mine, at UBC and in Canada. And he, you know, he, he has an insider outsider view, you know, he understands the Chinese system 'cause worked with it and been there,
00:09:55 - And, and the book is great because one of his main observations is, you know, the Chinese system works well on the tax administration side, and it has an entirely different approach to these kinds of tax administration, let's call them norms to what you might see in Canada and some other countries that have tax systems like Canada. The UK would be, you know, similar and the US would be similar. Australia, we'd have relatively comparable systems.
00:10:26 - system works not because of the, the richness of the legal framework, but I think rather because, of the kind of human dynamics informed by the practices of tax administrators in China and their interaction with taxpayers there, you know, in a way that lots of people who study tax administration from one of the, the systems I described at the beginning, like the UK Canada would never predict would
00:10:56 - And so the kind of claim is, you know, maybe our kind of preoccupation as scholars from those countries about getting the legal framework right and fussing over, you know, this word or that word in terms of our legislation. Maybe we're just off and there are in fact other really quite effective ways that we shouldn't, you know, discount of ending up in very much the same place. but but with a different mechanism for getting there, the kind of much more human interaction rooted type of mechanism. And so, so he, you know, with,
00:11:27 - that law's an an essential instrument, but I, but but one that sure, should, should spark those of us who are used to dealing in law to stop and think about the ways in which maybe our own, kind of bias because of our areas of study have led us to kind of pre conclude what's necessary. And, and I found that really intriguing about his book and I, you know, if, if, anyone listening to this hasn't taken a look at it, they sure should. It's fascinating. I had the pleasure as, as sort of part
00:11:58 - of time in the faculty of law McGill. And, and I think they do a brilliant job I think of, of kind of raising for us these questions about, you know, legal pluralism, which in their most interesting expression, I think ask us, you know, to see law in places that we would sometimes maybe think of them as practices. Like I'm, you know, I'm, there's, there's sophisticated work on this and I'm not, I'm not very sophisticated, Sam, but I, but I sort of oversimplify it. I would say, you know, we can do, we can kind

Redefining Law: Between Framework and Practice

00:12:31 - that way offers us. And one of them is to say maybe those of us who care about law really, are inclined to think it's more important than it is. And that's part of how we sort of reify our own areas of expertise and study and we should be cautious. I think about, about how we kind of frame up its importance. And, and, and that's kind of the, that's kinda the conversation we were having, I think out of the last question in, in the sort of statement that that way makes about, you know,
00:13:01 - On the other hand, there's a kind of another way of orienting to it, which is to say, actually maybe it's just that we're over obsessed with law on the books in some sense and the legal framework in terms of the legislative expression, and actually as legal scholars, we ought to be constructing all of these kind of human practices that we can see that are predictable as a form of law, right? And, and so, you know, in, in the, in the most challenging version of it, I had a colleague, at McGill who's, who's headed off now
00:13:33 - but who, you know, who would sort of provocatively say, look, art is a form of law like that there are, you know, there are all these, that, that what we understand to be law needs to be blown out in much bigger ways. And we need to be able to kind of construct our analytical frames in a way that lets us see the kinds of practices that way identifies in his book as in fact law. Like not law is not ential, it is in fact all that he identifies. And the limit we have as legal scholars is thinking that somehow there is something we've defined as law that can only be seen in a kind of,
00:14:28 - whether it's a legislative expression, a regulatory expression, a court expression, but that the human practices themselves predictable as they sometimes become, are also a kind of form of law. And so as a, as a, as a provocative curiosity, I enjoy, I think thinking about those questions. And so, and, and where it leads you is to ask, I think diff about different possible solutions to some of the challenges that we try to then fix through legal expression.

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