The company appealed against a refusal to refund Stamp Duty Land Tax in respect of two land transactions. They claimed entitlement to full relief as an enfanchisement. The initial notices had been given by an incorrectly formed RTE company. Though the property had been purchased by a compliant company, the notices were said to remain ineffective for relief from Stamp Duty.
Held: Though the company succeeded on two points, it failed because the legislation had not at the time been complete, and a claim as an RTE company for relief was not yet available: ‘the relief afforded by section 74 is not available unless and until the executive implements the relevant provisions of the 2002 Act . . the terms of section 74(1) confer relief conditionally on satisfaction of the conditions laid down in the later subsections. In that respect, they are unlike the unconditional formulae used in, for example, section 60 and 64. They are also unlike the other conditional formulae used in, for example, section 61 and 65. Parliament must, I think, be taken to have been aware that, for whatever reason, the amending provisions of the 2002 Act had not, for the most part, been implemented at the time section 74 of the Finance Act 2003 was enacted. In those circumstances, the natural reading of section 74(1) is that the relief for which the section provides was intended to be available as and when the amending provisions of the 2002 Act had been brought into force; whenever that might be.’
Sir Andrew Morritt Ch
[2008] EWHC 2828 (Ch), [2009] STC 682, [2009] BTC 7009, [2008] STI 2317, [2008] 42 EG 166
Bailii
Finance Act 2003 74, Leasehold Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002
England and Wales
Citing:
Appeal from – Elizabeth Court (Bournemouth) Ltd v Revenue and Customs SCIT 26-Nov-2007
SCIT STAMP DUTY LAND TAX – reliefs – collective enfranchisement by leaseholders – whether the chargeable transaction entered into by the Appellant was ‘a chargeable transaction entered into by an RTE company in . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Stamp Duty, Landlord and Tenant
Leading Case
Updated: 01 November 2021; Ref: scu.374395