§ Mr. Saltasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether subsistence payments made to men serving under the Fire Prevention (Business Premises) Order, 1941, are subject to Income Tax?
§ Captain CrookshankNo, Sir; the standard subsistence allowances prescribed by the Fire Prevention (Business Premises) (No. 2) Order, 1941, will not be regarded as assessable remuneration. As regards arrangements which were in force before the operative date of that Order (22nd September, 1941), the question to what extent allowances paid to employees constitute additional remuneration depends upon the facts of the particular case, but where extra expenses are necessarily incurred by a fire watcher through doing duty as such outside working hours and a specific payment is made to him by his employer in respect of those expenses which represents a reasonable estimate of their amount, the payment would not be regarded as chargeable to tax. In any case in which there is held to be Income Tax liability in respect of a payment to an employee on account of fire watching duties outside working hours, so much of the payment as corresponds to the standard subsistence allow-1526W ance which would have been payable under the recent Fire Prevention Order will be excluded from assessment.