The The Billion Dollar Sentence - The Foundational Paradox of the Meaning of Income

What if the entire Australian income tax system was built on a single contradictory sentence?

In this Explainer episode, we investigate how one 1935 judicial dictum by Sir Frederick Jordan became the cornerstone of “ordinary income.” We reveal how this single line—hailed as a golden rule, actually fuses two opposing philosophies of language, creating decades of confusion at the heart of Australian tax law.

Discover how the High Court’s ritual repetition of this dictum conceals a deeper tension between logic, language, and legal meaning itself and what that says about the true foundations of modern law.

Presented by the Private Members Union (PMU).