The Gazette 1973

CORRESPONDENCE

Office of the Revenue Commissioners,

Estate Duty Branch,

Dublin 2.

26 February 1973.

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 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.

(1969), 15-21.

(6)

Industrial Law Bulletin,

I, 3; "Sex, Career and

Family" (1971), M. Fogarty and others—an interesting

sociological study.

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

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)