Finance Act, 1999

Relief for gifts to the Scientific and Technological Education (Investment) Fund.

37.—The Principal Act is hereby amended in Chapter 2 of Part 15, by the insertion of the following section after section 485A:

“Relief for gifts to the Scientific and Technological Education (Investment) Fund.

485B.—(1) In this section—

‘Minister’ means the Minister for Education and Science;

‘relevant gift’ means a gift of money which—

(a) on or after the 6th day of April, 1998, is made to STEIF,

(b) is or will be applied by STEIF solely for the purposes for which the fund was established, and

(c) apart from this section is not deductible in computing for the purposes of tax the profits or gains of a trade or profession, or is not income to which section 792 applies or is not a gift of money to which section 484 applies;

‘STEIF’ means the Scientific and Technological Education (Investment) Fund established under the Scientific and Technological Education (Investment) Fund Act, 1997 (as amended by the Scientific and Technological Education (Investment) Fund (Amendment) Act, 1998 ).

(2) Where it is proved to the satisfaction of the Revenue Commissioners that a person has made a relevant gift and the person claims relief from tax by reference to that gift, subsection (5) or, as the case may be, subsection (6) shall apply.

(3) Where a relevant gift is made by a chargeable person within the meaning of Part 41, a claim under this section shall be made with the return required to be delivered by that person under section 951 for the chargeable period in which the gift is made.

(4) In determining the net amount of the relevant gift for the purposes of subsection (5) or subsection (6), the amount or value of any consideration received by the person concerned as a result of making the gift, whether received directly or indirectly from STEIF or otherwise, shall be deducted from the gift.

(5) For the purposes of income tax for the year of assessment in which a person makes a relevant gift to which this section applies, the net amount of the gift shall be deducted from or set off against any income of the person chargeable to income tax for that year and tax shall where necessary be discharged or repaid accordingly, and the total income of the person or, where the person's spouse is assessed to income tax in accordance with section 1017, the total income of the spouse shall be calculated accordingly.

(6) Where a relevant gift is made by a company, the net amount of the gift shall, for the purposes of corporation tax, be deemed to be a loss incurred by the company in a separate trade in the accounting period of the company in which the gift is made.

(7) Relief under this section shall not be given to a person for any year of assessment or accounting period, as the case may be, if the net amount of the gift (or the aggregate of the net amount of gifts) made by such person in that year or accounting period, as the case may be, is less than £1,000.

(8) STEIF, when required to do so by notice from the Minister, shall within the time limited by the notice prepare and deliver to the Minister a return containing particulars of the aggregate amount of relevant gifts received by it in the period specified in the notice and the disposal of such gifts.

(9) For the purposes of a claim to relief under this section, STEIF shall, on acceptance of a relevant gift, give to the person making the gift a receipt which shall—

(a) contain a statement that—

(i) it is a receipt for the purposes of this section, and

(ii) the gift in respect of which the receipt is given is a relevant gift for the purposes of this section,

and

(b) show—

(i) the name and address of the person making the relevant gift,

(ii) the amount of the relevant gift in both figures and words,

(iii) the date of the relevant gift,

(iv) the date on which the receipt was issued.”.