4 



ASSESSMENTS TO INCOME TAX. 



[June 1895. 



ASSESSMENTS TO INCOME TAX (SCHEDULE B.) 

 AND THE TITHE ACT OF 1891. 



The Board of Agriculture consider it desirable to give 

 publicity to the following extracts from correspondence between 

 the Board and the Commissioners of Inland Revenue on the 

 subject of Assessments to Income Tax, Schedule B., and the 

 Tithe Act of 1891 :— 



Extract from a letter, dated SOth January 1895, from the 

 Secretary of the Board of Agriculture to the Secretary of the 

 Board of Inland Revenue. 



" The Board would take this opportunity of enquiring 

 . . . whether, in the case of land shearing a Tithe Rentcharge 

 assessed separately to Income Tax (Schedule A.), the amount to 

 be assessed to Income Tax (Schedule B.) must necessarily be 

 arrived at by adding the Tithe Rentcharge to the amount at 

 which the lands are assessed to Income Tax (Schedule A.), or 

 whether it is not the duty of the General Commissioners to 

 ascertain the annual val^ie of the lands, according to the rules 

 provided in the Income Tax Acts, to assess the same both to 

 Schedules A. and B., and then to allow, in the case of Schedule A., 

 a deduction for the amount of the Tithe Rentcharge assessed 

 separately on the owner thereof, which conceivably may exceed 

 the annual value as ascertained. 



" The addition for the purposes of assessment to Income Tax 

 (Schedule B.) of the amount of the Tithe Rentcharge to the 

 amount at which the lands, apart from the Rentcharge, are 

 assessed to Income Tax (Schedule A.) is, as the Board are given 

 to understand, the practice recognised in the General Instructions 

 to Surveyors of Taxes, and it is doubtless a convenient one from 

 a revenue point of view, but it results in the consequence that 

 the assessment to Income Tax (Schedule B.) can never be less 

 than the amount of the Tithe Rentcharge, whatever the annual 

 value of the lands may be. 



" Moreover, the Tithe Rentcharge is to a greater or less extent 

 made the measure of itself, inasmuch as its remission depends 

 upon the assessment to Income Tax (Schedule B.), whilst the 

 latter depends in part, or it may be wholly, upon the amount of 

 the Tithe Rentcharge. 



" It is, of course, the case that until recently no one was 

 prejudiced by the existing practice, but now that in certain 

 districts the amount of the Tithe Rentcharge in many instances 

 approaches and sometimes exceeds the annual value of the 



