When a valuation was to be attributed to a property the test must be applied to the property as it actually existed and not to some other property, even if in real life a vendor would have been likely to make some changes or improvements before putting it on the market. As to ‘Splitting and joining’ properties, Lord Wilberforce said: ‘When, as is usually the case, the estate consists of an aggregate of items of property, each item must be separately valued, and it is not difficult to see that problems may arise as to the manner in which the separate units of valuation are to be ascertained or in which individual items are to be grouped into units of valuation. These problems must necessarily be resolved, as they are in practice, in a common sense way. The estate is to be taken as it is found: it is not to be supposed, in order to obtain higher figures of valuation, that any substantial expense is to be incurred or work done in organising the estate into units: on the other hand, some practical grouping or classification, such as can reasonably be carried out without undue expenditure of time or effort, by a prudent man concerned to obtain the most favourable price, may be supposed.’
Lord Reid said: ‘the phrase [in the open market] requires that the seller must take – or have been supposed to have taken – such steps as are reasonable to attract as much competition as possible for the particular price of property which is to be sold.’ and ‘the [1894] Finance Act permits no deduction from the price fetched of the expenses involved in the sale.’
Lord Wilberforce, Lord Reid
[1967] 1 AC 506
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Gray v Inland Revenue Commissioners CA 24-Feb-1994
Partnership interests in a tenanted freehold estate can be valued together. The court considered the ‘statutory hypothetical sale’ when valuing property for Inheritance Tax purposes: ‘The property must be assumed to have been capable of sale in the . .
Cited – Lloyds TSB Private Banking Plc (personal representative of Rosemary Antrobus deceased) v Inland Revenue (Capital Taxes); Re Cookhill Priory (No 2) LT 10-Oct-2005
LT TAX – Inheritance Tax – agricultural property relief – agricultural value – agricultural property – farmhouses – whether house occupied by ‘lifestyle’ farmer could be farmhouse – held bid of such person could . .
Cited – Grays Timber Products Ltd v Revenue and Customs SC 3-Feb-2010
An assessment to income tax had been raised after the employee resold shares in the company issued through the employees’ share scheme at a price which the Revenue said was above the share value. The company appealed against a finding that tax was . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Taxes – Other
Leading Case
Updated: 02 November 2021; Ref: scu.199732