substance over form
C1CEFR level
75/100Rarity: rare
TechnicalRegister
Law phrase
The principle that a transaction is taxed according to its true commercial reality rather than its legal labelling.
Applying substance over form, the tribunal treated the loan as a disguised distribution of profits.
Business noun
The principle that transactions should be accounted for by their economic reality rather than their legal wrapper.
Substance over form meant treating the sale-and-leaseback as a financing, not a genuine disposal.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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