Paper by: Guillermo O. Teijeiro
Most countries have either judicial or statutory general anti-avoidance rules (GAAR); Argentina enrols in the second group as GAAR are of statutory nature. Countries in both groups frequently combine GAAR with special anti-avoidance rules (SAAR).
GAAR are generally applied to interpret tax rules, to characterize taxpayers acts and transactions (i.e., assessment of facts), or both, as it is the case in Argentina.
SAAR may be patterned after GAAR to emphasize their application in certain contexts, or may be specifically designed as mostly mechanical rules separate from the conceptual elements of GAAR. In both cases, the interaction between GAAR and SAAR is complex and frequently raises conflicts of application and overlap. The conflicts focus on whether SAAR exhaustively govern the tax avoidance issue in their context of application to the exclusion of other rules or whether GAAR also apply in that context as a residual rule. Similar conflicts arise between domestic GAAR and treaty GAAR. Both are still open issues under Argentine tax law.