DUTY LEVIED ON GIFTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21985, 21 June 1933, Page 8

DUTY LEVIED ON GIFTS

iOO.OUO IN STOCK AND BONDS.' Decision was reserved by the Pull Court of the High Court _ of. Victoria recently on a special case stated for its, opinion by Mr Justice Dixon, whether estate duty could be levied on gifts of New Zealand Government stock and bonds and British Government stock and war loan bonds which Mr George Turnbull Bell, merchant, of Caulfield, had made to his son and two daughters a few months before his death in June, 1931. To each of his three children Bell gave bonds and stock of a face value of £20,000. The Federal Commissioner of Taxes included these gifts, the value of which he set down • at £60,403, in the estate, and he assessed the net value of the estate at £155,640. The duty levied was £15,733. The executors objected on the ground that the bonds and stock were property outside Australia, and, therefore, not assessable for duty, but the commissioner contended that the word “ property ” in the Act included all personal property, wherever situated, if the testator was domiciled in Australia at death,- The executors also submitted that if the word “property” included property outside Australia, at the. time of gift or death,, it was beyond the powers of the Commonwealth to levy duty upon it

Two “ certificates of freedom ” granted to transported prisoners at the expiry of their sentences have been discovered in the office of the Victorian curator of estates of deceased persons. They will be presented to the Public Library, in Melbourne. The older of the two documents relates to a man who was sentenced at Middlesex goal on April 5, 1832, and who arrived at Hobart Town 100 years ago. He was 22 years of age when convicted, and was sentenced to only seven years of exile, a penalty which in those harsh days was regarded as light. After reciting the prisoner’s date and place of conviction, sentence and date of arrival in Hobart Town, the certificate proclaims that “he hath duly .served the period for which he had been transported, and is henceforth restored to freedom.” That was on April 12, 1839. His papers show that he came to Victoria shortly after release, and committed suicide in the Western district in the forties.