The Gazette 1973

CORRESPONDENCE

Office of the Revenue Commissioners, Estate Duty Branch, Dublin 2. 26 February 1973.

solicitors have been spoken to on the phone. You will understand why the Commissioners are greatly perturbed that this situation should exist. The Minister for Finance is also gravely concerned, since these sums cannot be made available to the Exchequer until the transfers have been effected. Another dis- quieting feature of this problem is that the taxpayer is now losing the difference between the rate of interest on the security tendered and the 9 per cent interest rate on duty in arrear on the face value of the security for the period of the delay in effecting the transfer. This problem must necessarily be referred to in rela- tion to any representations which may be made to introduce here a system of the provisional assessment of objection to the adoption of such a system in our context. The legislative authority for the present procedure of stamping affidavits on credit is found in Section 123 of the Probate Duty (Ireland) Act, 1816. Section 125 of that Act enables the Commissioners to impound grants until the outstanding duty is paid—in the present instance, until the relevant securities are transferred to the Minister. The Commissioners would be reluctant to insist that grants be impounded in all cases because of the obvious inconvenience that would ensue—both for the Commissioners and the taxpayer. Their primary function, however, is to protect the revenue and they cannot, therefore, permit the present situation to continue. I am, accordingly, to request you to bring this matter before your Council at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime, perhaps you would be good enough to give the problem some publicity in your Gazette to see if some immediate improvement could be effected. Yours sincerely, M. K. O'Connor (Assistant Secretary). page 96) Further Reading (1) Interim Report of the Irish Commission on the Status of Women (August 1971). (2) The Worker and the Law, K. W. Wedderburn (1971), 16, 39, 234-37. (3) Employment and Productivity Gazette (January 1970). (4) Reports of the Standing Committee on the English Bill (19 February to 16 March 1970). (5) Industrial Education and Research Foundation Research Paper No. T (1969), 15-21. (6) Industrial Law Bulletin, I, 3; "Sex, Career and Family" (1971), M. Fogarty and others—an interesting sociological study. page 97) or Board of Trade certificates for non-solicitor convey- ances, offering a cheaper service than solicitors, who could satisfy any standards thought necessary to pro- tect the public from rogues. A PTA official says : "Many of our clients come to us precisely because of their previous bad experience of incompetence by solicitors. We convey property more efficiently than most soli- citors." The Sunday Times (17 February 1973) 98

E. A. Plunkett, Esq., Secretary. re Government Securities Tendered for Estate Duty Dear Mr. Plunkett, I am directed by the Revenue Commissioners to enlist your help in solving a problem to which I referred when I met Messrs Osborne and Finegan some time ago. You will appreciate that an Inland Revenue Affidavit must be receipted and stamped before a Grant of Repre- sentation can issue. An affidavit cannot be stamped until the duty has been paid to the Accountant-General of Revenue. When Government securities are tendered in payment of duty assessed on an Inland Revenue Affidavit, the securities cannot be transferred to the Minister for Finance until the Grant has issued. The Commissioners, therefore, advance, to the cashier, a sum equal to the face value of the tendered securities to enable the affidavit to be stamped and the grant to issue. These moneys must be supplied from other revenue receipts. Each personal representative under- takes to transfer the relevant securities immediately on the issue of the grant. The grant is taken up by the solicitor having carriage but, unfortunately, in a large number of cases, the securities in question are not trans- ferred to the Minister to enable him to remit the amount outstanding to the Revenue Commissioners. There is a sum of over £400,000 at present outstanding and it is expected that this sum will grow to £500,000 by the end of the present financial year. The list of cases in which transfers have been neglected is too lengthy to reproduce here. Some of the cases go back to 1969, even though reminders have been issued and EQUAL PAY FOR WOMEN (Contd. from and though their participation rate is lower than other developed oecd countries (see "Labour Force Statistics 1957-1968", OECD publication) indications are that this rate will increase in the future. According to infor- mation in the Quarterly Industrial Inquiry, in a week in December 1970 women's average hourly earnings amounted to roughly 56 per cent of men's. In the UK, the corresponding figure is around 60 per cent. Questions relating to taxation, enforcement, and most important of all, to equality of opportunity, have been excluded from this discussion. One can only hope that at least in respect of the matters outlined our Irish legislation will embody, not only formal justice, but social equality as well. SOLICITORS DECLARE FAR (Contd. fro University. The PTA believes its arrangement is legal but the Law Society may challenge it in court after the Divisional Court issues its judgment in the NHOS appeal. The Law Society is anxious to keep a monopoly because most solicitors get the bulk of their income from conveyancing and it maintains high professional standards to protect the public. The PTA, however, wants the creation of a register