Finance Act 1951

27 Power to obtain information as to interest paid or credited without deduction of tax

(1) Every person carrying on a trade or business who, in the ordinary course of the operations thereof, receives or retains money in such circumstances that interest becomes payable thereon which is paid or credited without deduction of income tax, and, in particular, every person carrying on the trade or business of banking, shall, if required to do so by notice from a surveyor, make and deliver to the surveyor, within the time specified in the notice, a return of all interest paid or credited by him as aforesaid during a year specified in the notice in the course of his trade or business or any such part of his trade or business as may be so specified, giving the names and addresses of the persons to whom the interest was paid or credited and stating, in each case, the amount of the interest, and the provisions of the Income Tax Acts with respect to the failure to deliver lists, declarations and statements in accordance with a particular or general notice shall apply to any such return:

Provided that—

(a) no interest paid or credited to any person shall be required to be included in any such return if the total amount of the interest paid or credited to that person which would otherwise have fallen to be included in the return does not exceed fifteen pounds; and

(b) the year specified in a notice under this subsection shall not be a year ending more than three years before the date of the service of the notice.

(2) Without prejudice to the generality of so much of subsection (1) of this section as enables different notices to be served thereunder in relation to different parts of a trade or business, separate notices may be served under that subsection as respects the transactions carried on at any branch or branches respectively specified in the notices, and any such separate notice shall, if served on the manager or other person in charge of the branch or branches in question, be deemed to have been duly served on the person carrying on the trade or business ; and where such a separate notice is so served as respects the transactions carried on at any branch or branches, any notice subsequently served under the said subsection (1) on the person carrying on the trade or business shall not be deemed to extend to any transaction to which the said separate notice extends.

(3) This section shall, with any necessary adaptations, apply in relation to the Post Office Savings Bank as if it were a trade or business carried on by the Postmaster General.

This subsection shall have effect notwithstanding anything in section four of the Post Office Savings Bank Act, 1861, but save as aforesaid that section shall remain in full force and effect.

(4) This section shall apply to interest paid or credited on or at any time after the sixth day of April, nineteen hundred and fifty.

(5) This section shall apply only to money received or retained in the United Kingdom, and if a person to whom any interest is paid or credited in respect of any money received or retained in the United Kingdom by notice in writing served on the person paying or crediting the interest—

(a) declares that the person who was beneficially entitled to that interest when it was paid or credited was not then ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom; and

(b) requests that the interest shall not be included in any return under this section,

the person paying or crediting the interest shall not be required to include that interest in any such return; and section thirty of the Income Tax Act, 1918 (which relates to fraudulent claims for relief), shall, with the necessary adaptations, apply in relation to notices under this subsection as it applies in relation to the claims mentioned in the said section thirty.