“(4) A company has non-trading profits for an accounting period from its loan relationships if the non-trading credits for the period exceed the non-trading debits for the period or there are no such debits. (5) The non-trading profits are equal to those credits, less any such debits. (6) A company has a non-trading deficit for an accounting period from its loan relationships if the non-trading debits for the period exceed the non-trading credits for the period or there are no such credits. (7) The non-trading deficit is equal to those debits, less any such credits”
“Every statute other than a pure consolidating statute is, after all, enacted to make some change, or address some problem, or remove some blemish, or effect some improvement in the national life. The court’s task, within the permissible bounds of interpretation, is to give effect to Parliament’s purpose. So the controversial provisions should be read in the context of the statute as a whole, and the statute as a whole should be read in the historical context of the situation which led to its enactment.”
“47. There can be no doubt that the definition of the “owner” of a hereditament in section 65(1) of the 1988 Act as “the person entitled to possession of it” is to be interpreted as denoting in a normal case the person who as a matter of the law of real property has the immediate legal right to actual physical possession of the relevant property. … … 48. In the unusual circumstances of this case, however, identifying “the person entitled to possession” in section 65(1) of the 1988 Act as the person with the immediate legal right to possession of the property would defeat the purpose of the legislation. As we have explained, the schemes were designed in such a way as to ensure that the SPV to whom a lease was granted had no real or practical control over whether the property was occupied or not and that such control remained at all times with the landlord. 49. In our view, Parliament cannot sensibly be taken to have intended that “the person entitled to possession” of an unoccupied property on whom the liability for rates is imposed should encompass a company which has no real or practical ability to exercise its legal right to possession and on which that legal right has been conferred for no purpose other than the avoidance of liability for rates. Still less can Parliament rationally be taken to have intended that an entitlement created with the aim of acting unlawfully and abusing procedures provided by company and insolvency law should fall within the statutory description. 50. In these circumstances we have no difficulty in concluding that, on the agreed and assumed facts, the SPVs to which leases were granted as part of either of the schemes we have described did not thereby become “entitled to possession” of the demised property for the purposes of the 1988 Act. Rather, throughout the term of the lease that person remained the defendant landlord.”
“Approaching the matter initially at a general level, the fact that Chapter 2 was introduced partly for the purpose of forestalling tax avoidance schemes self-evidently makes it difficult to attribute to Parliament an intention that it should apply to schemes which were carefully crafted to fall within its scope, purely for the purpose of tax avoidance. Furthermore, it is difficult to accept that Parliament can have intended to encourage by exemption from taxation the award of shares to employees, where the award of the shares has no purpose whatsoever other than the obtaining of the exemption itself: a matter which is reflected in the fact that the shares are in a company which was brought into existence merely for the purposes of the tax avoidance scheme, undertakes no activity beyond its participation in the scheme, and is liquidated upon the termination of the scheme. The encouragement of such schemes, unlike the encouragement of employee share ownership generally, or share incentive schemes in particular, would have no rational purpose, and would indeed be positively contrary to rationality, bearing in mind the general aims of income tax statutes.”
“We seem to have travelled a long way from the general and salutary rule that the subject is not to be taxed except by plain words. But I must recognise that plain words are seldom adequate to anticipate and forestall the multiplicity of ingenious schemes which are constantly being devised to evade taxation. Parliament is very properly determined to prevent this kind of tax evasion and, if the courts find it impossible to give very wide meanings to general phrases, the only alternative may be for Parliament to do as some other countries have done, and introduce legislation of a more sweeping character which will put the ordinary well-intentioned person at much greater risk than is created by a wide interpretation of such provisions as those which we are now considering.”
“I sometimes suspect that our normal meticulous methods of statutory construction tend to lead us astray by concentrating too much on verbal niceties and paying too little attention to the provisions read as a whole.”
“On the enactment of the originals 28 of the Finance Act 1960 it was possible to contend, and it was contended, that this section (and its associated sections) was directed against a particular type of tax avoidance known generally under such descriptions as dividend-stripping, asset-stripping and bond-washing, and that the sections and particular expressions used in them, amongst others 'transactions in securities', should be interpreted in the light of this supposed purpose. But this line of argument became unmaintainable after the decisions of this House in Inland Revenue Comrs v Parker' and Greenberg v Inland Revenue Comrs. It is clear that all the members of this House who decided those cases were of opinion that a wide interpretation must be given to the sections and to the expressions used in them. More than this, it appeared from the opinion of Lord Reid in Greenberg v Inland Revenue Comrs that the sections called for a different method of interpretation from that traditionally used in taxing Acts. For whereas it is generally the rule that clear words are required to impose a tax, so that the taxpayer has the benefit of doubts or ambiguities, Lord Reid made it clear that the scheme of the sections, introducing as they did a wide and general attack on tax avoidance, required that expressions which might otherwise have been cut down in the interest of precision were to be given the wide meaning evidently intended, even though they led to a conclusion short of which judges would normally desire to stop.”
“The second reason is that I would equate the test of causation in the words found in s. 382, “as a result of”, with the common law test in negligence, namely that the contravention must be an efficient cause, but it need not be the sole or dominant cause: see generally Clerk & Lindsell on Torts, 23rd edn at 2-09ff. … Applying that test I would conclude that the consumer’s entry into the SIPP was an efficient cause of the investment in the products and the consequent earning of commission. It was not the sole cause, or even the dominant cause, but the use of the SIPP was a necessary precursor to the investment being made and did more than merely provide the opportunity for the investment. The product investments could only be achieved by calling on the savings of consumers from their pensions, and that required the use of a pension mechanism, the SIPP, in order to make the investment. The transfer into the SIPP had an effective and efficient causative potency in bringing about the product investments and their consequent commission, even if analysed as a separate step in the arrangements.”
“171. Although in Leyland Shipping Lord Shaw referred to “the” proximate cause or “the” real efficient cause of loss, and other speeches also used the definite article, in Reischer v Borwick[1894] QB 548 , 551, Lindley LJ had contemplated the possibility that the ingress of water when the vessel was under tow was a concurrent proximate cause but that this would not prevent the loss from being covered, as the policy did not require the loss to be exclusively caused by the collision. It has since become well established that, as Lord Buckmaster expressed the principle in Board of Trade v Hain Steamship Co Ltd[1929] AC 534 , 539: “it is no answer to a claim under a policy that covers one cause of a loss that the loss was also due to another cause that was not so covered.” 172. In Heskell v Continental Express Ltd[1950] 1 All ER 1033 , 1048, Reischer v Borwick was treated by Devlin J as authority for a more general principle, extending beyond the field of insurance, that “if a breach of contract is one of two causes, both co-operating and both of equal efficacy, … it is sufficient to carry judgment for damages”.”