I move this Resolution which, I understand, has already been circulated to the House:—
1.—That the word "rents," wherever it occurs in the Income Tax Acts as part of the expression "stocks, shares, and rents" in relation to income arising outside Saorstát Eireann, shall include and be deemed always to have included any payment in the nature of a royalty and any annual or periodical payment in the nature of a rent derived from any lands, tenements, hereditaments, or heritages, including lands, tenements, hereditaments, or heritages to which the Rules of No. III of Schedule A of the Income Tax Act, 1918, or of Part I of the First Schedule to the Finance Act, 1929 (No. 32 of 1929), would apply or have applied if such lands, tenements, hereditaments, or heritages were situate in Saorstát Eireann.
(2) It is hereby declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution shall have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, 1927 (No. 7 of 1927).
This resolution deals with income arising from mining royalties, and other income of a similar nature arising outside Saorstát Eireann, and is necessary for precautionary purposes. As the law has hitherto been interpreted in the Saorstát, a person in receipt of income from, say, royalties from a coal mine in Great Britain was assessed either on the income arising in the year of assessment, or on the income arising in the year preceding the year of assessment, according to particular circumstances. A recent decision in the British High Court has, however, when read in conjunction with the provisions of the Finance Act, 1926, made it possible for a taxpayer in receipt of such income to claim that his income tax liability here should be measured not solely by the amount of income which he gets by way of rents or royalties, but by reference to the amount of income tax income of the person who was working the coal mine. The matter has been receiving my attention, as well as the attention of the Revenue Commissioners and their advisers for some little time, and whilst on the whole it is considered that such a claim would not be upheld, it was decided at a date subsequent to the date when the main Resolutions were introduced that the safest thing to do was to put the matter beyond doubt by legislation. The practical effect of the Resolution will be to leave matters precisely where they stood before this doubt was raised. No taxpayer will pay more than he would have paid under the practice hitherto prevailing in this country. A claim to which reference has been made, if upheld, would simply mean that definitely ascertained income would escape taxation.