Beyond Strict Construction: Reconstructing the Jurisprudence of Tax Interpretation in Ghana

The final proposition, upon which the whole of the argument converges, may be stated plainly enough. No person should be taxed because a court or a tax authority believes that the person ought to have been taxed; but no taxpayer should escape a tax which Parliament has validly imposed merely because an artificial or mechanical reading of statutory language obscures the legal and commercial reality of the transaction. The future of Ghanaian tax jurisprudence lies neither in fiscal literalism nor in interpretive expansionism, but in strict fiscal legality, textual fidelity, purposive interpretation and a disciplined attention to transactional reality.