Finance (No. 2) Act, 1915

Returns for purpose of Part III. and penalty for fictitious transactions.

44.(1) The Commissioners of Inland Revenue may, for the purposes of this Part of this Act, require any person engaged in any trade or business to which this Part of this Act applies, or who was so engaged during any accounting period or pre-war trade year, to furnish them within two months after the requirement for the return is made, with returns of the profits of the trade or business during the accounting period or pre-war trade years and such other particulars in connection with the trade or business as the Commissioners may require.

(2) It shall be the duty of every person chargeable to excess profits duty under this Part of this Act to give notice that he is chargeable to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue before the thirty-first day of January nineteen hundred and sixteen, and it shall be the duty of the liquidator of every company which is being wound up at the time of the commencement of this Act or is wound up after the commencement of this Act, and is chargeable to excess profits duty, to give notice of the fact to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue.

If any person fails to furnish a proper return in accordance with this section or to comply with any requirement of the Commissioners under this section, or to give any notice required by this section, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds and to a further fine not exceeding ten pounds a day for every day during which the offence continues after conviction therefor.

(3) A person shall not, for the purpose of avoiding the payment of excess profits duty, enter into any fictitious or artificial transaction or carry out any fictitious or artificial operation, and, if he has entered into any such transaction or carried out any such operation before the commencement of this Act, shall inform the Commissioners of Inland Revenue of the nature of the transaction or operation.

If any person acts in contravention of, or fails to comply with, this provision, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds.