Finance (No. 2) Act, 1915

Supplemental provisions as to quarterly assessment.

28.(1) Section twenty-one of the Finance Act, 1907, which relates to returns to be made by the employer, shall extend so as to apply to all weekly wage earners to whom the provisions of this Act as to quarterly assessment apply, and so as to enable returns to be required at such times and intervals as may be fixed by regulations made under this section.

Where an employer is a body corporate, including a company, that body corporate shall be liable to a penalty for failure to deliver a return in pursuance of section twenty-one of the Finance Act, 1907, as well as the secretary or other officer performing the duties of secretary of the body corporate.

(2) The assessment and charge of income tax in each quarter under this Act shall not affect the grant of any exemption, relief, or abatement which is dependent wholly or partially on total annual income; and any such exemption, relief, or abatement shall be given, in cases where the income tax is assessed and charged quarterly under this Act, as if the total wages on which the tax is charged and the total tax charged for the four quarters of the year were respectively the total income for the year from the wages and the total tax charged for the year in respect of the wages.

The Commissioners of Inland Revenue may, however, if they think fit in any case, in accordance with regulations made by them under this section, allow any such exemption, relief, or abatement by way of reduction of the quarterly assessment or repayment of the quarterly tax.

(3) The Commissioners of Inland Revenue may make regulations generally with respect to the assessment and collection of income tax under this Act in the case of weekly wage earners, and with respect to the procedure to be adopted for the purpose, and may in particular by those regulations in the case of those weekly wage earners provide for the assessment of the tax by the surveyor of taxes and for the collection of the tax by a collector appointed by them, and for the application to the tax of the rules and provisions applicable to Schedule E. in cases where those rules and provisions are not otherwise applicable.

(4) The amount of any income tax assessed and charged quarterly under this Act shall, without prejudice to any other method of recovery under the Income Tax Acts, be also recoverable summarily as a civil debt.

(5) Nothing in this Part of this Act shall affect the right of appeal to the general Commissioners, and the general Commissioners may, if they think it necessary for the purpose of expediting the hearing of appeals, add to the number of general Commissioners by the co-optation or appointment of such persons for the purpose as they think fit.

The powers under this provision may be exercised notwithstanding any limitation under any Act of the number of the general Commissioners.