The Queen acceded to the throne in 1952, the year when the Income Tax Act 1952 was enacted. How different was the tax code, tax textbooks and tax judges then compared to now?
It was a cold day, just below freezing, when I walked home from primary school in short trousers, cap and raincoat with my mother. She told me sadly that the King had died and that we now had a queen, Queen Elizabeth. It was 6 February 1952. It was one of those times, like when President Kennedy was shot, that you remember in every detail.
Three weeks later, on 28 February, the new queen gave the royal assent to the Income Tax Act 1952. I had not the slightest interest in that, and had indeed probably never heard of it before the day I started my career at the tax Bar at 4 Pump Court (now Pump Court Tax Chambers).
Yes, I am serious. Life as a tax practitioner then, as it must have been in 1952, would be completely unrecognisable to nearly all of today’s highly trained and skilled tax accountants, tax lawyers and chartered tax advisors. It was all so easy then.
Take the Yellow Tax Handbook, now Tolley’s and previously Butterworths. Well, it simply didn’t exist in 1952, starting its indispensable life eleven years later in 1963. My earliest copy is the 1966/67 edition: weighing in at just 800 grams it is less than 3cms thick and has 746 pages of text that don’t tear if you turn them too quickly. My latest edition has 16,250 ready-to-tear pages, weighs in at nearly 9 kgs and takes up a ridiculous amount of shelf space.
Take the taxes themselves. In 1952 we had income tax and surtax, all neatly covered in the 532 sections and 25 schedules of the ITA 1952; we had estate duty; we had purchase tax; and we had stamp duty. And, if I remember right, that was about it.
And, yes, I was serious when I said that I probably hadn’t heard of the Income Tax Act 1952 before moving to tax chambers. It might have helped, I suppose, but it didn’t seem to matter. Tax wasn’t on the syllabus in my three years of undergraduate law at Cambridge; and I didn’t have to do it for Bar Finals a few months later. Learning enough about tax law to be able to charge clients for advising them didn’t take too long. I read, cover to cover, Beattie’s Elements of Income Tax Law, first published shortly before the Queen’s accession. The Cambridge Law Journal review of it in July 1952 summed it up so nicely: ‘The whole of this complex topic is explained in a clear and comprehensive way’. Yes, it was, with the whole tax covered in just 179 pages!
That took me about a week, and cost me just a bit more than its £1.50 original price. Less expensive by a few pence, but with 15 more pages, was Beattie’s Elements of Estate Duty, which took me about another week to get through. And then there was the new capital gains tax, which was pretty easy to deal with as I shared a room with Peter Whiteman who had just written the textbook on it.
Information overload is a gentle description of all the sources of tax law and practice that swamp our minds today – Tax Cases, Tax Tribunal Cases, Tax Intelligence, Tax Journal, Tax Adviser, BAILII, Westlaw, etc. and then all the learned volumes dealing with every kind of tax issue you can think of. All delivered over the internet at the speed of light that leaves us no time to breathe.
How different it was back in 1967 when, as in 1952, the nearest to real-time information were The Times Law Reports. Sometimes there were tax cases there, as there would be from time to time in The Weekly Law Reports and the All England Law Reports, delivered in leisurely instalments by post. The only comprehensive set of reports of tax cases heard in the High Court and beyond was the Board of Inland Revenue’s own snail-paced Tax Cases. The problem was that these were published only after the litigation had completed its journey through the courts. Take for example CIR v Dowdall O’Mahoney (19952) 33 TC 259, a case dealing with the taxation of UK branches of an Eire company. This started its life at the Special Commissioners in January 1948 and finished up with a judgment in the House of Lords four years later, on 25 February 1952. By this time the Queen had acceded to the throne, so that the all-important initials after leading counsel’s names changed from Cyril King KC and Frederick Grant KC to Cyril King QC and Frederick Grant QC. As for significant decisions of the General and Special Commissioners (the precursors of today’s FTT and UT), well these weren’t published at all until 1995.
Talking of cases, it’s hard to believe – but true – that the General Commissioners and Special Commissioners didn’t have to give any reasons for allowing or dismissing an appeal unless the losing party ‘expressed dissatisfaction’ and required (on payment of 20 shillings) the Commissioners ‘to state and sign a case for the opinion of the High Court thereon’ (ITA 1952 s 64(3)). So unappealed decisions were decided in a few words, and never reached a wider audience than the parties themselves.
You might think that judgments in cases reaching the higher courts were carefully reasoned, and in many instances of course they were. But every now and again cases were decided with a brevity that today’s judges would kill for. Take, for example, Horowitz v Farrand (1952) 33 TC 221. On 4 March 1952, Vaisey J decided the appeal in all of 19 words: ‘I can see no ground whatever for allowing this appeal and I think it must be dismissed with costs.’ You might be forgiven for thinking that this must have been a frivolous appeal that didn’t warrant any serious reasoning. But that can hardly be right because the Inland Revenue was represented by the Solicitor-General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller QC (subsequently Lord Dilhorne) and another silk, Sir Reginald Hills QC.
In fact, it was a frequent feature of cases heard in the period around the Queen’s accession that the Inland Revenue would be represented by the attorney-general or the solicitor-general; and this had the practical consequence that the Inland Revenue’s legal team would always sit on the side of counsel’s bench nearest the door, thereby enabling the government’s law officers to make a swift but dignified entrance and exit. Old habits die hard and I still find it disconcerting to be on the door-side when representing the taxpayer.
Leaving the wigged and robed personnel and their location in the courtroom aside, what about the approach of the courts to tax law? That’s easily addressed: in 1952 the Duke of Westminster case ([1936] AC 1) epitomised the fundamentalist principles that tax statutes had to be interpreted literally and strictly, with no room for what we now routinely refer to as a purposive approach to statutory construction. The direction of travel didn’t change until about 20 years after the Queen’s accession, when Ron Plummer and his Rossminster engine of tax avoidance went too far and turned Sydney Templeman QC from poacher to Templeman J gamekeeper and game changer.
As for settling tax disputes, we weren’t handicapped by an illogical litigation and settlement strategy, or the slow machinations of compliance boards, so we had a free rein to try to settle with the inspector on sensible terms. So far as I can recall, despite the free reins I never witnessed a horse deal.
Coming back to the direction of travel, I just can’t finish without referring to dear old Wally. In those days the Special Commissioners’ courtrooms were located in Turnstile House, on High Holborn. If I remember right, they were on the fifth or sixth floor, with the other floors being occupied by other government departments. Wally was the lift operator, and he would be there every day without fail to pull the brass handle to steer the lift to and from the Special Commissioners’ floor. Heaven forbid that we would push the buttons marked 5 or 6 to get ourselves up or marked 0 to get us down again. But it was always nice to see Wally, and chat to him during these half minute journeys.
Yes, it was a very different, and so much more relaxed, time to be a tax practitioner.
The Queen acceded to the throne in 1952, the year when the Income Tax Act 1952 was enacted. How different was the tax code, tax textbooks and tax judges then compared to now?
It was a cold day, just below freezing, when I walked home from primary school in short trousers, cap and raincoat with my mother. She told me sadly that the King had died and that we now had a queen, Queen Elizabeth. It was 6 February 1952. It was one of those times, like when President Kennedy was shot, that you remember in every detail.
Three weeks later, on 28 February, the new queen gave the royal assent to the Income Tax Act 1952. I had not the slightest interest in that, and had indeed probably never heard of it before the day I started my career at the tax Bar at 4 Pump Court (now Pump Court Tax Chambers).
Yes, I am serious. Life as a tax practitioner then, as it must have been in 1952, would be completely unrecognisable to nearly all of today’s highly trained and skilled tax accountants, tax lawyers and chartered tax advisors. It was all so easy then.
Take the Yellow Tax Handbook, now Tolley’s and previously Butterworths. Well, it simply didn’t exist in 1952, starting its indispensable life eleven years later in 1963. My earliest copy is the 1966/67 edition: weighing in at just 800 grams it is less than 3cms thick and has 746 pages of text that don’t tear if you turn them too quickly. My latest edition has 16,250 ready-to-tear pages, weighs in at nearly 9 kgs and takes up a ridiculous amount of shelf space.
Take the taxes themselves. In 1952 we had income tax and surtax, all neatly covered in the 532 sections and 25 schedules of the ITA 1952; we had estate duty; we had purchase tax; and we had stamp duty. And, if I remember right, that was about it.
And, yes, I was serious when I said that I probably hadn’t heard of the Income Tax Act 1952 before moving to tax chambers. It might have helped, I suppose, but it didn’t seem to matter. Tax wasn’t on the syllabus in my three years of undergraduate law at Cambridge; and I didn’t have to do it for Bar Finals a few months later. Learning enough about tax law to be able to charge clients for advising them didn’t take too long. I read, cover to cover, Beattie’s Elements of Income Tax Law, first published shortly before the Queen’s accession. The Cambridge Law Journal review of it in July 1952 summed it up so nicely: ‘The whole of this complex topic is explained in a clear and comprehensive way’. Yes, it was, with the whole tax covered in just 179 pages!
That took me about a week, and cost me just a bit more than its £1.50 original price. Less expensive by a few pence, but with 15 more pages, was Beattie’s Elements of Estate Duty, which took me about another week to get through. And then there was the new capital gains tax, which was pretty easy to deal with as I shared a room with Peter Whiteman who had just written the textbook on it.
Information overload is a gentle description of all the sources of tax law and practice that swamp our minds today – Tax Cases, Tax Tribunal Cases, Tax Intelligence, Tax Journal, Tax Adviser, BAILII, Westlaw, etc. and then all the learned volumes dealing with every kind of tax issue you can think of. All delivered over the internet at the speed of light that leaves us no time to breathe.
How different it was back in 1967 when, as in 1952, the nearest to real-time information were The Times Law Reports. Sometimes there were tax cases there, as there would be from time to time in The Weekly Law Reports and the All England Law Reports, delivered in leisurely instalments by post. The only comprehensive set of reports of tax cases heard in the High Court and beyond was the Board of Inland Revenue’s own snail-paced Tax Cases. The problem was that these were published only after the litigation had completed its journey through the courts. Take for example CIR v Dowdall O’Mahoney (19952) 33 TC 259, a case dealing with the taxation of UK branches of an Eire company. This started its life at the Special Commissioners in January 1948 and finished up with a judgment in the House of Lords four years later, on 25 February 1952. By this time the Queen had acceded to the throne, so that the all-important initials after leading counsel’s names changed from Cyril King KC and Frederick Grant KC to Cyril King QC and Frederick Grant QC. As for significant decisions of the General and Special Commissioners (the precursors of today’s FTT and UT), well these weren’t published at all until 1995.
Talking of cases, it’s hard to believe – but true – that the General Commissioners and Special Commissioners didn’t have to give any reasons for allowing or dismissing an appeal unless the losing party ‘expressed dissatisfaction’ and required (on payment of 20 shillings) the Commissioners ‘to state and sign a case for the opinion of the High Court thereon’ (ITA 1952 s 64(3)). So unappealed decisions were decided in a few words, and never reached a wider audience than the parties themselves.
You might think that judgments in cases reaching the higher courts were carefully reasoned, and in many instances of course they were. But every now and again cases were decided with a brevity that today’s judges would kill for. Take, for example, Horowitz v Farrand (1952) 33 TC 221. On 4 March 1952, Vaisey J decided the appeal in all of 19 words: ‘I can see no ground whatever for allowing this appeal and I think it must be dismissed with costs.’ You might be forgiven for thinking that this must have been a frivolous appeal that didn’t warrant any serious reasoning. But that can hardly be right because the Inland Revenue was represented by the Solicitor-General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller QC (subsequently Lord Dilhorne) and another silk, Sir Reginald Hills QC.
In fact, it was a frequent feature of cases heard in the period around the Queen’s accession that the Inland Revenue would be represented by the attorney-general or the solicitor-general; and this had the practical consequence that the Inland Revenue’s legal team would always sit on the side of counsel’s bench nearest the door, thereby enabling the government’s law officers to make a swift but dignified entrance and exit. Old habits die hard and I still find it disconcerting to be on the door-side when representing the taxpayer.
Leaving the wigged and robed personnel and their location in the courtroom aside, what about the approach of the courts to tax law? That’s easily addressed: in 1952 the Duke of Westminster case ([1936] AC 1) epitomised the fundamentalist principles that tax statutes had to be interpreted literally and strictly, with no room for what we now routinely refer to as a purposive approach to statutory construction. The direction of travel didn’t change until about 20 years after the Queen’s accession, when Ron Plummer and his Rossminster engine of tax avoidance went too far and turned Sydney Templeman QC from poacher to Templeman J gamekeeper and game changer.
As for settling tax disputes, we weren’t handicapped by an illogical litigation and settlement strategy, or the slow machinations of compliance boards, so we had a free rein to try to settle with the inspector on sensible terms. So far as I can recall, despite the free reins I never witnessed a horse deal.
Coming back to the direction of travel, I just can’t finish without referring to dear old Wally. In those days the Special Commissioners’ courtrooms were located in Turnstile House, on High Holborn. If I remember right, they were on the fifth or sixth floor, with the other floors being occupied by other government departments. Wally was the lift operator, and he would be there every day without fail to pull the brass handle to steer the lift to and from the Special Commissioners’ floor. Heaven forbid that we would push the buttons marked 5 or 6 to get ourselves up or marked 0 to get us down again. But it was always nice to see Wally, and chat to him during these half minute journeys.
Yes, it was a very different, and so much more relaxed, time to be a tax practitioner.
