Finance Act, 1916

Provisions as to directors’ fees.

49.(1) Where the pre-war standard of profits is taken to be the percentage standard or is calculated by reference to the statutory percentage in the case of any trade or business owned or carried on by a company or other body corporate whose directors have a controlling interest, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue may, if they think fit, as respects any accounting period, including a past accounting period, for the purpose of the provisions relating to the statutory percentage and for the purpose of the determination and computation of profits under Part I. of the Fourth Schedule to the principal Act, treat the company or body corporate as if it were a firm and not a company or body corporate and the directors or any of them as if they were partners in the firm.

(2) If as respects any accounting period ending on or after the first day of July nineteen hundred and fifteen, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue refuse to allow a deduction in respect of any increase in the remuneration of directors of any trade or business, and the taxpayer is required to pay excess profits duty in respect of the disallowed deduction, the taxpayer shall be entitled to recover from any such director the amount which the taxpayer has paid by way of excess profits duty in respect of the increase; but any amount so recovered shall, unless the Commissioners otherwise direct, be treated as excess profits duty paid by the director from whom it is recovered and not as excess profits duty paid by the taxpayer.

(3) In this section, the expression “directors” includes any managers or persons concerned in the management of the trade or business hwo are remunerated out of the funds of the trade or business who are remunerated out of the funds of the trade or business.