REVIEWS
| Date | 01 March 1945 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1945.tb02891.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1945 |
NOTES
OF
CASES
83
of
indebtedness payable on 1st January,
1940,
with interest meantime
;
the certificates were negotiable instruments and had
a
current money’s
worth, while the corporation reserved therein a right of prior redemption
;
a similar resolution,
mutntis mulandis,
was passed the following year in
respect of that year’s
surplus.
The appellant’s main argument was that the
issue of the certificates represented a receipt by them of income in the form
of
money’s worth which was chargeable to tax at the date of their issue and
not at redemption
;
the very great increase in the rates
of
British income
tax between
1936
and
1940
was, of course, the reason for this contention.
The Court
of
Appeal held unanimously that income from the distribu-
tion did not arise until the certificates became payable. Scott, L. J., was
of the opinion that the substance
of
the transaction was the declaration of a
money dividend payable not presently but upon a future date. The
other Lords Justices held themselves concluded by the Court’s earlier
decision in
Cross
v.
London and
Provincial Trust,
Ltd,
[I9381
I
K.B.
792
:
in that case
it
had been held that the issue of funding bonds in respect of
interest which had fallen into arrear was neither
a
payment of the interest
nor a receipt
of
income
so
that no charge to income tax could be made on
the value
of
the bonds.
“
A
promise to pay
a
debt is not payment thereof.”
so
that the issue
of
a postdated cheque or
a
promissory note
in
respect of a
pre-existing liability could not be “income,” though
it
might represent
“money’s worth”; applying this rule to the instant case,
it
was held that
no taxable income arose to the stockholders of the American corporation
until their certificates of indebtedness were in fact redeemed.
It
should be
noted that the rule in
Cross’
case has been abrogated for income tax pur-
poses by Sect.
25,
Finance Act,
1938,
but only
as
regards funding bonds
issued in respect of liability to pay
interest.
A.
FARNSWORTH
REVIEWS
ENGLXSH
COURTS
OF
LAW.
By
H.
G.
HANBURY, D.C.L.,
1944.
Oxford
It is difficult to tell from a perusal
of
this
book
what public Dr. Hanbury
had in mind when writing it. The Home University Library
is
commonly
supposed to be intended for the general reader; a more than usually
well educated general reader it is true, but still a general reader. I wonder
how many such readers will make head or
tail
of his volume.
Dr. Hanbury’s scholarship is well known, and his style is one of the
most attractive
of
contemporary English writers
on
law. But scholarship
requires to be used with discretion when one is writing fur the uninitiated,
and when lucidity is an essential epigrammatic antitheses are apt to cause
fog rather than enlightenment.
Is
it
really necessary, for example, in an
elementary work on the English Courts, to embark upon an elaboiate
description of feudal tenure “with its four free tenures of frankalmoign,
chivalry, serjeantry and socage”? While to state that in England “we
live in law under a despotism” is no doubt an excellent opening gambit
to obtain a fast and furious discussion in
a
society of constitutional lawyers,
but does
it
help the general reader to get a clear idea of anything?
It
is true, however, that the publisher’s “blurb” describes the book
as
“an
attempt
to
show the historical background of the Courts.” One
may di~ubt whether there are many general readers who
want
to
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