Wright v Boyce (Inspector of Taxes)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE JENKINS,LORD JUSTICE SELLERS |
| Judgment Date | 18 June 1958 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1958] EWCA Civ J0618-1 |
| Date | 18 June 1958 |
| Court | Court of Appeal |
[1958] EWCA Civ J0618-1
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
Lord Justice Jenkins
Lord Justice Sellers
Lord Justice Pearce
Mr HILARY MAGNUS, Q.C. and Mr RODERICK WATSON (instructed by Messrs. Withers & Company, 4, Arundel Street, Strand, W.C.2.) appeared as Counsel on behalf of the Appellant.
Mr CYRIL KING, Q.C. and Mr ALAN ORR (instructed bv the Solicitor, Board of Inland Revenue, Somerset House, Strand, W.C.2.) appeared as Counsel on behalf of the Respondent.
: This is an appeal from a judgment of Mr Justice Vaisey dated the 6th Maroh, 1958, whereby he upheld a decision of the Special Commissioners in favour of the Crown to the effect that the Appellant, jgr Joseph Wright, was taxable under Schedule on certain voluntary payments made to him at Christmas in each of the seven years 1948/49 to 1954/55.
The Appellant was employed as a professional hunt servant. He had been a hunt servant all his life and, in 1946, he was appointed huntsman to the Bathurst Hunt. He remained there from 1946 to 1952 or thereabouts and he then went from the Bathurst Hunt to the Woodland pytchley Hunt. In his capacity as huntsman successively with these two hunts he was the senior member of the hunt staff and occupied a responsible position. It is important to observe that the Appellant was engaged in the case of each hunt by the Master and not by any body which could be said to be representative of the hunt as such. In each case the constitution of the hunt (as described in paragraph 3 of the Case Stated) may be said to have been nebulous in the extreme. As cases of this kind turn very much on the particular facts, it will be necessary for me to quote at some length from the Stated Case, but, before I do that, 1 might perhaps indicate the points upon which Mr Magnus for the Appellant especially relied.
The payments in dispute were voluntaiy payments and, as I have said, the huntsman was employed by the Master. The payments came from persons who can be succinctly described as followers or supporters of the hunt.
Mr Magnus's main points which he put in the forefront of his argument were these: the Appellant, Mr Joseph Wright, had no contractual title to the payments, that is to say, there was nothing in the terms of his engagement which said he would be entitled to receive and retain presents of money made to him by followers or supporters of the hunt at Christmas time; secondly, there is the point that, both with the Bathurst and with the Woodland Pytchley, the Appellant was engaged as huntsman by the Master at a weekly wage; and further, not only was there no contract about the presents of money at Christmas but nothing was said about them on the occasion of the Appellant's engagement in either case. Then, as I have already said, the payments were made by persons other than the Appellant's employer? they were, in fact, made by followers and supporters of the hunt and were purely voluntary payments in as much as the persons making them were under no legal obligation to do so.
Then, said Mr Magnus, the Appellant was well known in the district because of his employment as huntsman, and he had many personal friends in the area. The importance of that, said Mr Magnus, is that it makes it possible to account for the voluntary payments made as having been made from motives of personal regard for the Appellant. Then Mr Magnus pointed out that there was no organised collection, there were nc circulars and there was no solicitation of any kind with respect to these voluntary payments at Christmas and, finally, said Mr Magnus, what was given by each donor was given purely spontaneously as a mere present.
As against these points I should mention that (as will appear from the Case when I read it in a moment) there was - and is, I think - a well- established practice in most hunts in this country, and in the Bathurst and Woodland Pytchley hunts in particular, to make presents of money to the huntsman at Christmas and presents of money in this case were made regularly each year. I am not saying that the payers were necessarily always the same persons, but the subvention (if I may so describe it) was regularly made: the making of the payments took place every single Christmas during his employment and at the first Christmas just as much as at the last.
I should next refer at some length to the Case. Paragraph 3 shows that both in the case of the Bathurst Hunt and the Woodland Pytchley Hunt the Appellant was engaged by the Master. I do not think it is necessary for me to go further into paragraph 3.
4. The Appellant (who had been a hunt servant since boyhood) was engaged as huntsman of the Bathurat Hunt in 1946 by the then Master. He was engaged orally, at an interview, when he was told what his wages and other terms of his employment would be; nothing was said about tips or Christmas presents. In 1952 he was engaged as Huntsman of the Woodland lytchley Hunt by one of the joint Masters, Captain Goddard Jackson; this engagement was also oral; Captain Goddard Jackson told him the wages and other terms of the employment, and nothing was said about tips or Christmas presents.
5. In each year when the Appellant was huntsman to the Bathurst Hunt and the Woodland Pytchley Hunt he received presents of cash at or about Christmas time. Some of these presents came to him from persons with whom he had come into contact in his capacity as a hunt servant earlier in his career, but who had no connection with the Hunt to which he was huntsman at the time the presents were given. These, however, were few in number, and most of the presents of cash given to the Appellant at Christmas came from persons with whom he was at the time in contact in his capacity as huntsman, Such persons would mostly be people who regularly rode with the Hunt, but would also include persons who only occasionally rode, and persons who did not ride but had an interest in the Hunt. Many of these were personal friends of the Appellant, who, in his capacity as huntsman, had become a personality of some note to a wide circle of people in the district, not only to people who hunt, but also to people who voluntarily assist in the work of the kennels, to farmers, and to people who attend meets on foot. He also got presents in kind from fanners.
6. It is a widespread custom in Hunts in most parts of the country (including the Bathuist and Woodland Pytchley Hunts) for followers of the Hunt to give the huntsman presents of cash at Christmas time, and the usual occasion for the gifts is the meet on Boxing Day. The custom is one of long standing and well known to people who hunt, and soon becomes known to people who take up hunting. There is no compulsion on followers of the Hunt to give such presents nor (in the case of the Bathurst and Woodland Fytchley Hunts) was any form of circular or reminder given to followers about it, or any organised collection or cap, either on Boxing Day or at any other time. There is no conventional amount to give; a person would give a larger amount if he liked or respected the Appellant, or a smaller one or none at all if he disliked him. About half of the persons riding at the Boxing Day meet would give the Appellant a present (where several members of the same family were riding? the Appellant generally receives one present from the head of the family only); some people (particularly those who could not attend the Boxing Day meet) give the Appellant a present before or after Boxing Day; if, however, there is no meet on Boxing Day the Appellant does not receive many presents. For example in one year when hunting was stopped by frost from October to February and in another year when the Appellant was prevented by illness from hunting during the Christmas season he received very few presents of cash.
I can omit paragraphs 7 and 8. The Commissioners expressed their decision in these terms: 9. We, the Commissioners who heard the appeal, found on consideration of the evidence before us that (with the exception of the gifts referred to in sub-paragraph (2) below) the sums of money in question came to the Appellant because he was employed as huntsman and accrued to him by virtue of that employment. In coming to this conclusion we did not overlook the fact that in the case of many of the said sums the giver was influenced to some extent by personal regard for the Appellant, but we found that such personal regard had its origin in the way in which the Appellant personally performed his duties as huntsman.
"(2) We held that the appeal failed in principle, but we directed that in arriving at the amount assessable there should be excluded from assessment the amount of any gifts which came from persons who had no connection with the Hunt with which the Appellant was employed in each of the relevant years." The appeals against the assessments were disposed of on that basis. There was an adjustment made in respect of the payments referred to in sub-paragraph (2) of paragraph 9.
Those are the facts and the question is whether on those facts the payments voluntarily made at Christmas to the Appellant by followers and supporters of, and; I should add, persons interested in? the hunt, were profits of his employment within the meaning of Schedule E. I do not think it is necessary to refer to the statutory provisions because I think it is not open to doubt that the expression "profits of his employment" sufficiently conveys the purport of Schedule E for the purposes of this case.
Now, this, as will have been observed, is one of those cases where it is sought to tax payments made voluntarily on the part of the persons who made them. It is, of course, well settled that payments may be taxable in the hands of the...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Laidler v Perry ; Morgan v Perry
...had. scored more than fifty runs), and the case of the huntsman's tips (where money was collected for the huntsman on Boxing Day). See Wright v. Boyce. which is reported in 36 Tax Cases at page 160. 5 In this case the Commissioners made this finding: "The first question for decision is whet......
-
White v Franklin
...established principles to the particular facts of the particular case. 11 One of the recent cases brought to our attention was that of Wright v. Boyce, reported in 38 Tax Cases, page 160, in which the question was raised whether a huntsman was taxable on the fruits of the annual collection ......
-
Laidler v Perry ; Morgan v Perry
...by way of remuneration for his services. This principle was applied to Christmas presents received by a hunt servant in Wright v. Boyce, 38 T.C. 160. The principle was re-stated in the House of Lords in Hochstrasser v.Mayes, 38 T.C. 673. I will read only two short passages. At page 705, Vis......
-
Inland Revenue v Morris
...Ever, (Sgd.) Norman Elliott. 2 Herbert v. M'QuadeELR, [1902] 2 K. B. 631;Seymour v. ReedELR, [1927] A. C. 554; Wright v. BoyceWLR, [1958] 1 W. L. R. 832; Hochstrasser v. MayesELR, [1960] A. C. 376; Laidler v. PerryELR,[1966] A. C. 3 Calvert v. WainwrightELR, [1947] K. B. 526;Mudd v. Collins......