Finance Act 1957



Finance Act , 1957

(5 & 6 Eliz. 2) CHAPTER 49

An Act to grant certain duties, to alter other duties, and to amend the law relating to the National Debt and the Public Revenue, and to make further provision in connection with Finance.

Most Gracious Sovereign,

We , Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom in Parliament assembled, towards raising the necessary supplies to defray Your Majesty's public expenses, and making an addition to the public revenue, have freely and voluntarily resolved to give and grant unto Your Majesty the several duties hereinafter mentioned; and do therefore most humbly beseech Your Majesty that it may be enacted, and be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

I Customs and Excise

Part I

Customs and Excise

S-1 Entertainments duty.

1 Entertainments duty.

(1) Entertainments duty shall not be chargeable except in respect of entertainments which consist wholly or partly of a cinematograph show or a television show.

(2) Subject to the following provisions of this section, the entertainments duty chargeable on any payment for admission shall be equal to the amount (if any) by which the amount of the payment, excluding the amount of the duty, exceeds eleven pence.

(3) Entertainments duty shall not be chargeable in respect of an entertainment by reason of the inclusion in it of any cinematograph or television show which is merely ancillary to a lecture or exhibition or designed to give instruction or information relevant to the purposes of a lecture or exhibition.

(4) The entertainments duty chargeable in respect of any entertainment shall be reduced by one third if the Commissioners of Customs and Excise on an application made in such manner as they may direct are satisfied that—

(a ) the entertainment consists partly of one or more cinematograph or television shows and partly of other items, but is all given in one auditorium; and

(b ) not less than one quarter of the total time taken by the entertainment (excluding intervals) is taken by those other items.

(5) Subsection (4) of section one of the Finance (New Duties) Act, 1916 (which relates to the charge of duty on lump sum payments and other payments covering more than the admission to a single entertainment), shall have effect with the omission of the words ‘or covers admission to an entertainment during any period for which the duty has not been in operation’ and of the words ‘in respect of which entertainments duty is payable’.

(6) Entertainments duty shall be chargeable in accordance with this section notwithstanding any exemption conferred by any enactment passed before this Act, but the First Schedule to this Act shall have effect for the purpose of conferring exemptions from duty.

(7) The power conferred by subsection (1) of section two of the Finance (New Duties) Act, 1916, to make regulations for carrying the provisions of that Act as to entertainments duty into effect shall include power to make regulations for carrying into effect the provisions of this or any other Act as to the duty.

(8) Subsections (1) to (5) of this section shall apply and be deemed to have applied to payments (whenever made) for admission to entertainments given after the fourth day of May, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven.

(9) Subsection (6) of this section shall not apply as regards entertainments given before the fourth day of August, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven; but as regards any such entertainment given after the said fourth day of May, section seventeen of the Finance Act, 1948 (which provides relief for rural entertainments), shall have and be deemed to have had effect with the substitution in subsection (1) for the words ‘a population not exceeding two thousand’ of the words ‘a population not exceeding three thousand’.

(10) Where entertainments duty has been charged on any payment made before the date of the passing of this Act and by virtue of this section a less amount of duty or no duty should have been charged, the person by whom the duty was paid shall be entitled to repayment of the overcharge.

S-2 Television duty.

2 Television duty.

(1) On every licence to which this section applies (in this section referred to as ‘a television licence’) there shall be charged a duty of excise, to be known as television duty, at the standard yearly rate of one pound (or such other rate as under the following provisions of this section is applicable to the licence); and no licence on which the duty is chargeable shall be valid unless the appropriate duty is paid on or before the issue of the licence.

(2) On a television licence of a type designed to authorise in any premises the installation and use for receiving television broadcast programmes of apparatus in rooms let or available for letting to guests or boarders as living rooms or bedrooms, television duty shall be charged, not at the standard rate, but at a yearly rate equal to the aggregate duty at the standard rate on separate licences for those premises and for each of those rooms (up to the number covered by the licence), and on any other television licence which authorises apparatus to be installed and used as aforesaid in more than one place (otherwise than by giving general authority as to the whole or part of any specified premises, area, vehicle or vessel) the duty shall be similarly charged as on separate licences for each of those places:

Provided that this subsection shall not apply to a licence unless the licence is or, if it authorised the installation of apparatus only in a single place, would be one for which the licence fees are prescribed by post office regulations.

(3) Where the licence fees for a television licence are not prescribed by post office regulations, and the licence is not one to which subsection (2) of this section applies, the television duty on the licence shall not be charged at the standard rate, but shall bear to the licence fees for that licence the same proportion as the duty on a licence chargeable at the standard rate bears to the licence fees for a licence so chargeable.

(4) The television duty payable on a television licence (other than a licence chargeable in accordance with subsection (3) of this section) shall be calculated at the appropriate yearly rate according to the number of months in the period for which the licence is issued (any incomplete month being treated as a complete month); and where a licence taken out after the expiration of a previous licence is issued so as to expire at the end of a period calculated from that expiration, it shall for this purpose be treated as a licence for that period:

Provided that where a licence of a type normally issued for a period of a particular length is for special reasons issued for a longer or shorter period, but the licence fees payable for it are the same as if it had been issued for a period of the normal length, the licence shall be treated for the purposes of this subsection as a licence for a period of the normal length.

(5) Where a television licence is issued on the surrender of an unexpired television licence, and under post office regulations the licence fees payable for the new licence are reduced by reason of the surrender of the old, the television duty on the new licence shall be reduced in the same proportion as the licence fees.

(6) Where a television licence on which television duty has been paid at a yearly rate is surrendered unexpired, and subsection (5) of this section does not apply by reason of the surrender to reduce the television duty chargeable on another licence, then for each complete month unexpired of the period for which the licence was issued there may be repaid an amount of duty not exceeding one-twelfth of the yearly rate at which the duty was paid on the licence.

(7) Television duty shall not be chargeable on any licence issued as a duplicate of a television licence which has been lost or destroyed, but for the purposes of this section the surrender of any licence so issued shall be treated as the surrender of the original licence.

(8) Television duty shall be collected, and any repayment of the duty shall be made, through the Post Office in accordance with the directions of the Postmaster General, but without prejudice to the application to the duty of section eleven of the Customs and Excise Act, 1952 (which provides among other things for the payment of sums collected on account of excise duties to the general account of the Commissioners of Customs and Excise at the Bank of England).

(9) This section applies to any licence under section one of the Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1949, being a licence of a type designed wholly or partly for apparatus which is to be used primarily for receiving television broadcast programmes and is not to be so used solely or primarily with a view to re-broadcasting or relaying those programmes by wire or by wireless:

Provided that this section shall apply only to licences issued in Great Britain, and shall not apply to any licence for which no licence fees are payable.

(10) In this section—

(a ) ‘licence fees’ means in relation to any licence the sums payable to the Postmaster General in respect of the issue of the licence;

(b ) ‘post office regulations’ means regulations made by the Postmaster General under section two of the Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1949;

and in subsection (2) of this section ‘place’ includes a vehicle or vessel or part of one.

(11) Television duty shall be chargeable on any licence issued after the beginning of August, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven, and this section shall have effect as from the beginning of that month.

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