Third, a taxpayer should not be discouraged from taking risks, because free
enterprise thrives on
risk taking. So, provided the deduction is genuinely for
income or business purposes it should not be disallowed on the basis that it is
risky or unusual.
While the logic is overwhelming that the word “in” is the major source of
ambiguity in s8(1) it is rare to find even reference to it in texts, cases and
articles that deal with the provision. When it is recognised, it becomes clear
that courts have to make statutory common law to flesh out what “in” means in
this context. To accomplish this, they need to formulate policy considerations,
as was done above, to guide them in the task. When lawyers start to interpret
s8(1) in this way the ensuing common law should possess greater coherence
of thought and principle than does the present law.
Relational Ambiguity
Introduction
Relational ambiguity is ambiguity that arises over the way words or phrases
relate to one another. This type of ambiguity is heavily concerned with
grammar and syntax.
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It is not clear 'what goes with what.' Relational
ambiguity can take several forms. It can also easily occur in poetry, and
sometimes does in order to import literary effect because poetic licence
permits a variation of the natural word order.
Unclear Reference
Some words are by nature referential. Examples are pronouns such as ‘he’,
‘she’ and ‘it’, and the definite article 'the.' A provision can be ambiguous if it
has a referential word and does not make clear to what it refers. An example,
where ‘the’ is ambiguous, is the Yiddish proverb: "Send a fool to close the
shutters and he will close them all over the town”.
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11.3.3 Grammar
Sometimes the grammar of a sentence may be not clear. An example comes
from Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant fold.
In the second line the verb "holds" is put at the end. The result is that it is not
clear which is subject and which is object of the verb. Does the air hold the
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Collector of Customs v Agfa-Gearet (1996) 141 ALR 59, 64
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A legal example is in the case of Leveridge v Kennedy [1960] NZLR 1.
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