The House was asked whether a hypothetically rebuilt block of flats would have been subject to the Rent Restriction Acts.
Held: A court should not shrink from applying the fiction created by the deeming provision to the consequences which would inevitably flow from the fiction being real.
Lord Asquith of Bishopstone said: ‘If you are bidden to treat an imaginary state of affairs as real, you must surely, unless prohibited from doing so, also imagine as real the consequences and incidents which, if the putative state of affairs had in fact existed, must inevitably have flowed from or accompanied it. One of these in this case is emancipation from the 1939 level of rents. The statute says that you must imagine a certain state of affairs; it does not say that having done so, you must cause or permit your imagination to boggle when it comes to the inevitable corollaries of that state of affairs.’
Lord Asquith
[1952] AC 109
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Fowler v Revenue and Customs SC 20-May-2020
The taxpayer, a diver resident in South Africa had undertaken engagements within UK waters and now disputed his liability to Income Tax using a deeming provision in section 5 of the 2005 Act being self employed.
Held: HMRC’s appeal succeeded. . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 27 October 2021; Ref: scu.653886
