AGREEMENT NOT STAMPED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20243, 1 May 1929, Page 15

AGREEMENT NOT STAMPED.

USE OF FRANKING MACHINE.

RULING BY DEPARTMENT. [BY TELEGRAPH. —PRESS ASSOCIATION.] PALMERSTON NORTH, Tuesday. An important ruling has been given by the Stamp Duties Department on the question of the mode of payment of stamp duty on agreements and other documents required to be stamped. The ruling was given following a case in the local Magistrate's Court in which a hire-purchase agreement had been stamped to the amount of one shilling and threepence by the use of a franking machine. Counsel for the defence contended that the use of such machines was illegal. The question was accordingly submitted by the Court to the Stamp Duties Department at Wellington, from whom the following reply has been received:— The impressing by the use of a recording machine on the instrument described of stamp values to the amount of Is 3d does not make the document a dulystamped instrument. Provision is made in section 17 of the Post and Telegraph Act for the use of a recording machine for the purpose of prepayment of postage and charges on telegrams in addition to the payment of stamp duty upon receipts. There is no other purpose for which a recording machine can bo used. The amount of Is 3d so impressed on the document has been treated as money paid to the Post Office for services, whereas had the document been properly stamped the amount of the duty would have been paid into the public account as part of the public revenue derived from taxation.