ASSESSMENTS UNDER SCHEDULE A. (Hansard, 23 April 1941)

§ Capt. Crookshank

This Resolution is to allow Clauses to be introduced into the Finance Bill to strengthen the machinery for the collection of Schedule A, which I am sure is a matter very near to the heart 211 of the hon. Gentleman, because he has mentioned it in previous Budget Debates. The existing machinery has for some time past, as fie and other hon. Members know, in certain cases, been found difficult, and, of course, the higher the rate of tax, the more serious become the difficulties of collection and of loss arising out of difficulties of collection. The first paragraph of the Resolution deals with what one would have thought was rather a curious point, and that is, that the validity of the Schedule A assessment is sometimes challenged, because in order to be valid at present it has to contain the name of the person who is the landlord. One would have thought that that was not very difficult, but curiously enough, cases arise where that difficulty has to be met. Sometimes it is merely a change of ownership. I daresay that at the moment, with the devastated houses, that difficulty may very easily increase. Sometimes we have had cases where there has been deliberate evasion in tenement buildings, and landlords sometimes conceal their identity by having the properties which they have acquired put into the names of relations or nominees. If that sort of thing happens, the collectors have a great deal of trouble in identifying, and therefore in carrying out, the preliminary necessity of having the name of the landlord on the assessment.

It is in order to deal with that point that we shall propose in the Finance Bill that the tax shall be recoverable from the person who was in fact the landlord of the property on 1st January. If, through one or other of these occurrences, his name does not actually appear on the assessment form, he will be given the opportunity of proving that he is not the landlord. He will be assumed to be the landlord, and it will be for him to prove that he is not. I do not think there is anything of which anybody could really complain in regard to that point.

The second part of the Resolution says: Further provision shall be made as to the persons from whom and the manner in which tax under Schedule A shall be recoverable. At present, if you have an unwilling landlord, the means of collecting Schedule A is sometimes unduly laborious, if it is not appropriate to have court proceedings. There is the statutory power of collecting from the tenant, who then deducts any 212 tax from the rent. In the straight case that is pretty easy, but in the case of large blocks of flats or tenements there is no statutory power for collecting. It is obvious that you cannot get all Schedule A through a named tenant, nor is there any particular reason why you should name the tenants if there are 30 or 40 of them, and this part of the Resolution is in order to bring in some arrangement to cover that point. I do not think that it is necessary now to say exactly what we have in mind, but that is the object of the Resolution. The wording of the third part of the Resolution says that it shall apply to past and future assessments, for whatever year of assessment. That is not retrospective taxation. It enables the Revenue to collect tax which has already been assessed, and which has fallen due and ought already to have been paid.