The Meaning of Income in the Law of Income Tax

A considerable amount has been written concerning the meaning of income for taxation purposes. The usual practice of Canadian writers has been to arrive at the meaning of income through the terms of the Canadian statute law. This approach may be justified on the view that the statute law is paramount and therefore of greater importance than the cases. On the other hand, the Canadian statute law, far from providing a code of law on the meaning of income, presents a very disjointed picture. Many matters of the utmost importance either are not dealt with at all or are dealt with only in part. Wherever the statute law is inadequate the case law remains the sole guide. Moreover, unless the approach and substance of the case law on the meaning of income is clearly understood the extent of this inadequacy cannot be readily appreciated. For this reason Francis Eugene LaBrie attempted to present, as far as possible, a complete picture of the case law on the meaning of income and then to superimpose on this law the text of the Canadian statutes. He has not dealt fully with all aspects of the statutory provisions since they can be found well analysed elsewhere. In addition, he found it necessary to deal fairly extensively with the Canadian Income War Tax Act and with English income tax legislation in order to deal effectively with the case law that has arisen in England and Canada.