“Omai has always been considered to be one Reynolds’s greatest works.”
“Horses and carts, wagons and drays” seem to me the most material part of the plant: they are the materials or instruments which the employer must use for the purpose of carrying on his business”
“the statements by the majority of the House of Lords in the dry dock case of Commissioners of Inland Revenue v Barclay, Curle & Co. Ltd. 45 TC 221, show quite conclusively that in this Taxing Statute the Courts do not apply the meaning to the word "plant" as the ordinary Englishman understands it. It has acquired by the course of decisions a special meaning in tax cases. It has acquired a special meaning, it seems to me, in the interests of fairness, that "plant" extends virtually to a man's tools of trade - that is the phrase which Cross J. used. It extends to the things which he uses day by day in the exercise of his profession. Mr. Medd, in his excellent argument before us, would confine a professional man's "plant" to things used physically like a dentist's chair or an architect's table, or, I suppose, the typewriter in a barrister's chambers, but, for myself, I do not think "plant" should be confined to things which are used physically. It seems to me that on principle it extends to the intellectual storehouse which a barrister or a solicitor or any other professional man has in the course of carrying on his profession. The difficulty has arisen because the Legislature, when it extended this provision to professions, did not make clear the scope of the word "plant" in that context. It seems to me, in the context of a profession, the provision of "plant" should be so interpreted that a lawyer's books - his set of law reports and his textbooks - are "plant".”
". in its ordinary sense, it includes whatever apparatus is used by a business man for carrying on his business, - not his stock-in-trade which he buys or makes for sale; but all goods and chattels, fixed or moveable, live or dead, which he keeps for permanent employment in his business"
“In my opinion the Commissioners have not been shown to have misdirected themselves nor ` is the conclusion at which they arrived in any sense unreasonable. The problem which the Commissioners were called upon to solve was one concerned with a 'service industry': I think this factor is important, because the question of what is properly to be regarded as 'plant' can only be answered in the context of the particular industry concerned and possibly, in light also of the particular circumstances of the individual taxpayers' own trade .. . I think that much difficulty is caused by seeking to place limitative interpretations on the simple word 'plant': I do not think that the classic definition propounded in Yarmouth v France suggests that it is a word which is other than of comprehensive meaning - 'whatever apparatus is used by a business man for carrying on his business' - whatever the business may be... It is difficult to see that the provision of conditions of comfort or even luxury lies outside the legitimate operations of an hotel keeper or by consequence that he should not be entitled in his business to make use of articles designed to subserve that purpose... To do this may, in one sense of the word, no doubt be regarded as providing or enhancing the 'setting' in which the services are themselves provided - but at the same time the 'setting' (as opposed to the structure or place within which the businessman conducts his business)... is something the use of which is itself one of the services which the hotel owner makes available to his customer. I do not think that the fact that certain objects of furnishing or even of decorative quality alone can be characterised as serving only an amenity purpose is in any way to be regarded as a prima facie ground for rejecting a claim to have expenditure on them held to be expenditure on plant.”