§ For the purpose of any claim to relief from Estate Duty under Sub-section (2) of Section five or Sub-section (1) of Section twenty-one of the principal Act, in the case of persons dying on or after the thirtieth day of April nineteen hundred and nine, payment of or liability to duty, whether the payment was made or the liability attached before, on, or after that date shall not be deemed to be a payment of or liability to duty in respect of settled property if the payment was made or the liability attached in respect of an interest in expectancy in any property on the death of a person (other than the settlor).
§ Mr. CAVE moved to leave out the word "whether" ["whether the payment was made"], and to insert instead thereof the word "where."
§ The effect of Clause 55 is to impose in a certain case a new duty. The object of the Amendment is to omit the words which make that retrospective. It may very well happen that under the existing law the person who has paid the first duty has cleared the estate, and he has the estate free of any further charge of duty. Unless the word is altered as I propose he will be subject to a further charge. I do not think it is the wish of the House to disturb existing rights which have already accrued and crystallised. I do not think in that case that there ought to be a new duty. I propose to confine the operation of the Clause to cases where the payment was made or the liability attached on or after the date mentioned in the Clause.
§ Mr. J. W. HILLSI beg to second the Amendment. I think there is a very strong case for it. In certain eases the interest that is free from duty will have been dealt with on the basis of being duty free. It may be that the interest has been settled, and arrangements have been made which would not have been made except upon the assumption that the interest was duty free, and I think it is a very hard case that where it is now free from duty the property is to be specially taxed.
§ The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Haldane)If the hon. Member will look at Clause 64 he will see that the case is provided for. The particular point raised was discussed frequently in Committee, and applies to a great many cases 1108 other than this. The point is this, stripped of all technicalities, that where there has been a deed which has created a succession of interest prior to the passing of this Bill, and the death on which the duty falls to be collected takes place after the date of the passing of this Bill, the duty can be collected. The Amendment would make it impossible to collect the duty unless the disposition was also subsequent to the passing of the Act. In other words, the purpose is to say that the principle ought not to apply to old deeds, but only to new deeds. That question is covered by the principle which has been laid down over and over again. In the Succession Duty Act of 1853, when Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he negatived the view of the two hon. Gentlemen who have moved the Amendment and laid down that where there was an old disposition, and death took place after the passing of the Act, the duty should be collected. In 1881, when Mr. Childers was Chancellor of the Exchequer, the same principle was followed, and there—in the case of these duties—they were collected in the case of old instruments, the death being after the passing of the Act. The same practice was followed by Mr. Goschen with the additional duties of 1889, and by Sir William Harcourt in 1894, and it is really too late now to depart from it. We are only following the exact principle which was adopted in the principal Act which we are amending here, and it would be contrary to all the precedents of dealing with these things to go back, to make the date of the disposition necessarily subsequent to the date of the coming into operation of the Act under which the duty is collected. For these reasons we cannot accept the Amendment.
§ Amendment negatived.