Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970

43 General rule for aggregation of investment etc. income of unmarried infants not regularly working

(1) Subject to the following provisions of this section, an infant's income, so far as it is income for a year of assessment or part of a year of assessment during which he or she is unmarried and not regularly working, shall, in the circumstances specified in section 44 below, be treated in accordance with that section as income of his or her parent or parents.

An infant is to be treated for the purposes of this subsection as working regularly if, and only if, he or she—

(a) is engaged in a full-time occupation, not being one entered into during an interval not exceeding fifteen months between two periods of full-time education, and

(b) intends to be regularly engaged in that or another such occupation,

and in this provision " occupation " means any office, employment, trade, profession or vocation.

(2) Subsection (1) above does not apply to—

(a) earned income, or

(b) income derived from any sum, or from assets representing any sum, paid by way of, or in satisfaction of a claim for, damages in respect of personal injury to the infant (including any disease, and any impairment of his or her physical or mental condition) or paid in respect of any such personal injury by a body established for charitable purposes only, or by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board or under any enactment of the Parliament of Northern Ireland providing for compensation in respect of criminal injuries, or

(c) income consisting of payments made to a female infant by the putative father of a child of the infant and for the benefit, maintenance or education of that child,

but, subject to those exclusions and to subsection (3) below, applies to all such amounts as would fall to be included in computing the infant's total income apart therefrom, and so applies notwithstanding anything in any other enactment (including, except so far as the contrary is expressly provided, any enactment passed after this Act) requiring any amount not to be treated as income of anyone other than the infant.

(3) Subsection (1) above shall not have effect in relation to an infant for any year of assessment for which his or her aggregate income, so far as it would fall within that subsection or within section 437(1) of this Act (settlements on children: treatment of income as settlor's) but for this exception and the corresponding exception in subsection (3) of the said section 437, does not exceed £5.

(4) Income of an infant falling to be treated as income of a parent by virtue of the provisions of this Chapter shall be so treated for all income tax purposes, or for the purposes of income tax other than surtax, or for the purposes of surtax only, according to the purposes for which it would have constituted income of the infant but for those provisions.

(5) Any tax falling to be assessed in respect of income which is to be treated by virtue of this Chapter as income of an infant's parent shall, instead of being assessed on the infant, or on the infant's trustee, guardian, curator, receiver or committee, or on the infant's executors or administrators, be assessable on the parent, or, in the appropriate cases, on the parent's trustee, guardian, curator, receiver or committee, or on the parent's executors or administrators.

(6) This section shall be disregarded for the purposes of section 21 of the [1965 c. 25.] Finance Act 1965 (calculation of capital gains tax by reference to liability to income tax).