tax-law legal-concepts
Is there a legal principle regarding laws that cannot reasonably be complied with?
<p>Is there any concept in the legal world that covers laws that are too difficult or impractical to comply with?</p>

<p>Here's an example; suppose an American moves to the UK and buys a house. The mortgage is for £300,000, which is equivalent to $300,000 at the time of purchase. However by the time the house is sold, 20 years later, the house is worth £900,000 and is equivalent to $1,200,000. The owner must now calculate exactly how much money he earned - taking into account the GBP/USD exchange rate every time there was a mortgage payment. This would require many dozens or possibly hundreds of hours to do, at massive cost (if performed by a tax professional). </p>

<p>In the example above, should the owner not properly follow these rules, and perhaps just make some rough estimate, could he be held criminally responsible for filing an incorrect tax return? </p>

<p><strong>Or</strong> does there exist some kind of defense that complying with the law would simply have been completely unreasonable or impractical?</p>

<p>Sometimes laws contain exceptions when they are "unreasonably" burdensome. For example the US "Americans with Disabilities Act" does not require providing wheelchair access when this would require tearing down a building, or even major structural changes, and only requires that employers provide "reasonable" accommodations.</p>

<p>But the clerical cost of compliance is not usually a reason for an exception.</p>

<p>In the case in the question, since the owner does not actually make a profit until the house is sold. it might be sufficient to compute the profit in local currency, and then apply the conversion factor once to the total profit. But even if a separate conversion had to be applied to each separate payment, that is exactly the kind of thing that an app or computer program could do quickly and easily. Nothing says that the computation need be manual.</p>

<p>When compliance with a law is <strong>impossible</strong> or would violate some other law, courts generally hold that the law cannot be enforced, or must be complied with in some alternate way.</p>

<h2>No</h2>

<p>You cannot be punished for failing to comply with an <a href="https://reason.com/blog/2018/06/29/californias-top-court-impossible-laws-no" rel="nofollow noreferrer">impossible</a> law but impracticable, difficult, time-consuming or expensive do not amount to impossible.</p>

<p>If the law makes your operations uneconomical then you can either comply with the law and incur a loss, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/16/google-news-spain-publishing-fees-internet" rel="nofollow noreferrer">withdraw</a> from the market, or operate as a criminal enterprise.</p>

<p>There are many examples through history of businesses and entire industries effectively impacted by the cost of compliance. For example, chemical companies face much higher costs now then when they could freely dump toxic waste in residential areas.</p>
