Your Tax Dollars at Work - in Plain English
- The Loophole Report
- Oct 22, 2016
- 2 min read
Having just worked through some particularly verbose and confusing provisions in the Tax Act, it was good to know that the Government is (sort of) trying to make laws easier....then I dug deeper and was bitterly disappointed.
I was pleased when I discovered that the Australian Government Office of Parliamentary Counsel (“the OPC”) “has been active in encouraging the use of plain language in legislation”. This is a noble and worthwhile cause given the malignancy of complex and complicated drafting used in today’s laws. These are rules that bog down business and generate uncertainty – so I say, hurrah for the OPC…..no…wait…hold on…oh crap!
The OPC’s website states that it is trying to create legislation that is readable and easy to use, but as I read on, I see that the OPC goes on to describe its approach which include sentences that:
“tend to be short, avoid embedding, and branch to the right…rely on verbs rather than nouns, the active rather than the passive voice, and positive rather than negative formulations to state the intended law”
Without stopping to appreciate the irony of the above, the website goes on to state that:
“The sequencing of provisions is based on chronological order, logical order, order of importance or some other principle or combination of principles that is likely to make sense to the reader”
Looks like the guys down at the OPC did not read the job description.
They’ve also managed to put the PC in the OPC with this beauty:
“We prefer to use the term “plain language” rather than “plain English” because we believe that it covers a wider range of techniques and practices.”
My response, in plain English or plain language or whatever is…. ….WTF???!!!@?
Poorly articulated laws cost individuals and businesses countless of thousands of wasted hours and money. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be shining the light on some more crazy examples of legislative drafting. In the meantime, if you would like to see this craziness for yourself check it out at:
Whilst you are there, you may also want to check out the recently reissued, nine-page blockbuster entitled “Giving written drafting instructions to the OPC.” Yes…nine pages!
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