Journal of Arts and Humanities (JAH) 1 Anti-Avoidance and Tax Laws: A Case of Fiji Shivneil Kumar Raj 1 , Mohammed Riaz Azam 2 ABSTRACT The pervasiveness of tax avoidance is undoubtedly linked to the tax policies of any country. In Fiji, residents for tax purpose have to disclose income from all sources within and outside Fiji whereas non- resident has to disclose income derived from sources in Fiji. Fiji has a comprehensive tax system put in place with tax laws continued to be amended to curb any loopholes in the system so that everyone pays their fair share of tax. Thus, this research paper applied document analysis methodology. The objective of this research was to highlight Fiji’s position on tax avoidance and how has Fiji addressed such issues identified in Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS). Furthermore, the paper has discussed, Fiji’s tax laws relating to anti-avoidance and provide recommendations to further strengthen and protect Fiji’s tax base from being eroded away through various schemes or arrangements that taxpayer’s might indulge into for the purpose of paying less tax or avoiding tax. The findings indicated that Fiji’s position on tax avoidance issues has remained firm, pro-active and have made substantial progress in regulatory framework and in tax compliance culture. Keywords: Tax, Tax Avoidance, Tax Evasion, Anti-Avoidance, BEPS and Fiji Income Tax Act. This is an open access article under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. 1. Introduction Tax is the principle means by which a government is funded (Fulcher, 1999). Tax collection enables financial funding for government expenditures (Jaidi et al, 2013). Indeed, funding is required by government to provide public goods such as education, health services, social welfare, public safety, and infrastructure developments. However, tax avoidance has turned into an all-pervading phenomenon. Non- compliance of tax imposed openly disrupts the chain of income distribution through loss of revenues anticipated by taxes, reduction in public services and leads to other imbalances in the general flow of the economy and public welfare (Kang, 2016). Moreover, supporting an aggressive approach to avoiding taxes via artifice skews the distribution of the society’s total tax burden (Raiborn et al, 2015). During the year 2016, the Fiji Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) identified $128 million of possible tax evasion and $81 million as funds available for possible laundering in and through the Fijian financial 1 Assistant Lecturer in Accounting, School of Business and Economics, The University of Fiji. Email: ShivneilR@unifiji.ac.fj 2 Lecturer in Accounting, School of Business and Economics, The University of Fiji. Email: riazm@unifiji.ac.fj International Journal of Business and Social Research Volume 09, Issue 03, 2019: 01-20 Article Received: 03-07-2019 Accepted: 28-04-2019 Available Online: 22-07-2019 ISSN 2164-2540 (Print), ISSN 2164-2559 (Online) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18533/ijbsr.v9i3.1165