Finance (No. 2) Act 1915

45 Supplemental provisions as to excess profits duty

(1) The excess profits duty shall be assessed by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, and shall be payable at any time, not being less than two months, after it is assessed.

The Commissioners may, in any case where they think fit, allow the duty to be paid in instalments of such amount payable at such .times as the Commissioners direct.

(2) The duty may be assessed on any person for the time being owning or carrying on the trade or business or acting as agent for that person in carrying on the trade or business, or, where a trade or business has ceased, on the person who owned or carried on the trade or business or acted as agent in carrying on the trade or business immediately before the time at which the trade or business ceased, and where there has been a change of ownership of the trade or business, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue may, if they think fit, take the accounting period as the period ending on the date on which the ownership has so changed and assess the duty on the person who owned or carried on the trade or business or acted as agent for the person carrying on the trade or business at that date.

(3) The amount of duty payable shall be recoverable as a debt due to His Majesty from the person on whom it is assessed. Any such amount shall if it is less than fifty pounds be recoverable also summarily as a civil debt.

(4) Where a company is wound up after the commencement of this Act, and before the first day of July, nineteen hundred and sixteen, and the company would be chargeable with excess profits duty if the provisions of this Act were continued and. extended to accounting periods ending before the first day of July, nineteen hundred and sixteen, it shall be the duty of the liquidator of the company to give notice to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, and to set aside such sum out of the assets of the company as appears to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to be sufficient to provide for any such excess profits duty as may become chargeable.

(5) Any person who is dissatisfied with the amount of any assessment made upon him by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue under this Part of this Act may (except in cases where a special right of appeal is given under this Part of this Act) appeal to the general Commissioners for the division in which he is assessed, or to the special Commissioners, and those Commissioners shall have power on any appeal, if they think fit, to summon witnesses and examine them upon oath.

The power under sections twenty-one and twenty-two of the Income Tax Act, 1853, to require an appeal in Ireland to the special Commissioners to be reheard by the county court judge, or chairman of quarter sessions, or recorder, shall apply to an appeal in Ireland under this provision.

Section fifty-nine of the Taxes Management Act, 1880 (which relates to the statement of a case on a point of law), shall apply with the necessary modifications in the case of any appeal to the general or special Commissioners under this section or of the rehearing of any such appeal in Ireland, and in the case of a reference to the Board of Referees under this Part of this Act, as it applies in the case of appeals to the general or special Commissioners under the Income Tax Acts.

(6) The duty assessed by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue shall be payable notwithstanding any appeal under this section except in cases where the Commissioners of Inland Revenue direct to the contrary, but the Commissioners shaft make such repayments, if any, as are necessary to give effect to any decision on appeal as soon as possible after such decision has been given.

(7) The Commissioners of Inland Revenue may make regulations with respect to the assessment and collection of the excess profits duty and the hearing of appeals under this section, and may by those regulations apply and adapt any enactments relating to the assessment and collection of income tax, or the hearing of appeals as to income tax by the general or special Commissioners, which do not otherwise apply.

(8) All Commissioners and other persons employed for any purpose in connection with the assessment or collection of excess profits duty shall be subject to the same obligations as to secrecy with respect to excess profits duty as those persons are subject to with respect to income tax, and any oath taken by any such person as to secrecy with respect to income tax shall be deemed to extend also to secrecy with respect to excess profits duty.