Corporation Tax - 1997

The case shown here are derived from the lawindexpro case law database. lawindexpro is a low cost case law database, with over 260,000 case listings, and over 200,000 links to full text judgments. The free service below shows the core information on the case, but is restricted in several ways. A small proportion of cases do allow access to the full lawindexpro information. These cases are selected at random, and may be different on your next visit. The active links through to lawindexpro are extremely powerful allowing full access to all linked cases.  

This page lists 7 cases, and was prepared on 28 October 2012.

John M Harris (Design Partnership) Ltd -v- Lee [1997] STC (SCD) 240
1997 SCIT D A Shirley	Corporation Tax	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	Mr Harris, an architect, owned more than 75% of the taxpayer company (John M Harris (Design Partnership) Ltd). He also owned all the shares in John M Harris (Properties) Ltd. He wanted to buy a holiday home in France and was advised that the property should, for French legal reasons and especially because of the laws of inheritance, be owned by a limited company, and he decided that it should be held by Properties Ltd. It was used exclusively by Mr Harris and his family, and was never let. Held: Properties Ltd should be disregarded for the purposes of calculating relief pursuant to section 13(4) since it had not carried on any trade or business at the relevant time. Although the main object of Properties Ltd in its Memorandum of Association was that of an investment company, it did not follow that it had carried on that business when it acquired any property. Although a company might be carrying on a business of investment even though its investments were such as to provide no income, that did not mean that a company had to be carrying on a business merely because it owned property.

Cook (Inspector of Taxes) -v- Medway Housing Society Ltd
1997 ChD	Corporation Tax
	Housing association which was registered under Act is an investment company and is to carry a profit charge.
	Industrial and Provident Act 1965 - Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 130

Sarsfield (Inspector of Taxes) -v- Dixons Group Plc and Related Appeals
19 Feb 1997 ChD	Corporation Tax
	Writing down allowances were available for costs of distribution centers for shops.
	Capital Allowances Act 1968 7

Vodafone Cellular Ltd -v- G Shaw (Her Majesty's Inspector of Taxes) [1997] STC 734; [1997] EWCA Civ 1297
20 Mar 1997 CA Millett LJ	Corporation Tax	Casemap 1 Citers
	The court considered the application of the 'exclusively' test for expenditure which wassough to be set off against tax. Eaxining the leading modern case: " the following propositions may be derived. (1) The words for the purposes of the trade mean to serve the purposes of the trade. They do not mean for the purposes of the taxpayer but for the purposes of the trade, which is a different concept. A fortiori they do not mean for the benefit of the taxpayer. (2) To ascertain whether the payment was made for the purposes of the taxpayer's trade it is necessary to discover his object in making the payment. Save in obvious cases which speak for themselves, this involves an inquiry into the taxpayer's subjective intentions at the time of the payment. (3) The object of the taxpayer in making the payment must be distinguished from the effect of the payment. A payment may be made exclusively for the purposes of the trade even though it also secures a private benefit. This will be the case if the securing of the private benefit was not the object of the payment but merely a consequential and incidental effect of the payment. (4) Although the taxpayer's subjective intentions are determinative, these are not limited to the conscious motives which were in his mind at the time of the payment. Some consequences are so inevitably and inextricably involved in the payment that unless merely incidental they must be taken to be a purpose for which the payment was made. To these propositions I would add one more. The question does not involve an inquiry of the taxpayer whether he consciously intended to obtain a trade or personal advantage by the payment. The primary inquiry is to ascertain what was the particular object of the taxpayer in making the payment. Once that is ascertained, its characterisation as a trade or private purpose is in my opinion a matter for the commissioners, not for the taxpayer."
	Link[s] omitted

H M Inspector of Taxes (Atwood) -v- Anduff Car Wash Limited [1997] EWCA Civ 2128; (1997) 69 TC 575
17 Jul 1997 CA Peter Gibson LJ, Robert Walker and Beldam LJJ	Corporation Tax	Casemap 1 Cites
	Capital allowances. The taxpayer operated automatic car wash sites. It claimed capital allowances for the entirety of a wash hall, housed within a building incorporating washing machinery and control equipment, and surrounded by tarmac areas used for circulation, queuing and parking. It said that the entire site, or entire wash hall, was a single item of qualifying plant. The Inspector accepted that some of the car wash facilities were plant, but not each entire site. The Special Commissioners allowed the taxpayer's appeal. The Crown succeeded on appeal to the judge. Held: The appeal was denied, applying the 'premises' test. The only reasonable conclusion was that neither an entire site nor an entire wash hall (i.e. the building housing the car wash machinery) could be regarded as a unit of plant: although they satisfied the business use test, they failed the premises test, as both the entire site and the wash hall functioned as premises, not as plant. "It is hard to see how land, as distinct from a structure could ever be apparatus functioning as plant."
	Capital Allowances Act 1990 22 24
	Link[s] omitted

Edward Jukes (H M Inspector of Taxes) -v- S G Warburg and Company Limited [1997] EWCA Civ 2604
30 Oct 1997 CA	Corporation Tax
	Entitlement to relief on losses surrendered between companies in the same group.
	Link[s] omitted

Girobank Plc -v- Philip Handel Clarke (H M Inspector of Taxes) [1997] EWCA Civ 3061
19 Dec 1997 CA	Corporation Tax	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	The use of a building for data processing does not qualify it as the subjection of goods or materials to any process and therefore no capital allowance was claimable.
	Capital Allowances Act 1990 18
	Link[s] omitted