BRITISH INCOME TAX

Evening Star, Issue 23093, 20 October 1938, Page 8

BRITISH INCOME TAX

VISITORS' LIABILITY ALTERATION IN BASIS The basis of liability of visitors to England to income tax has been completely changed as a result of a recent legal decision. A visitor more than 182 days in a financial year involves liability to tax, and in order to avoid this it became the practice for funds to be remitted for living expenses in the vear prior to that in which the visit is made. The recent legal decision- completely alters the position, and persons making arrangements for long leave in Eng-, land, or for return there on retirement, have been advised by a London income tax consultant to obtain reliable advice as to the present tax position. The old methods of minimising liability are not only useless in most cases, but may now have’the opposite effect to that intended. The secretary of the Taxpayers’ Association of Victoria, Mr M. J. Pettigrove. pointed out recently that hitherto liability had been generally held to occur when a Dominion resident on a visit to England stays there for more than six months in any financial year, which in the United Kingdom begins on April 5. A method adopted by some Australian visitors to England has been to lodge money on deposit with a bank in Australia, and then raise an overdraft at the London branch of the Australian. bank on the security of the deposit receipt. The Taxpayers’ Association of Victoria was in regular correspondence with the Inconie Taxpayers’ Society of Great Britain, from whom the new ruling would soon be received. It should be noted, Mr Pettigrove added, that inhere the tax had been paid on income in any part of the British Empire outside of the United Kingdom, a rebate of British tax paid would be made on production of documentary proof that such income has already borne tax in the place of derivation.