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1935 (3) TMI 17

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..... a doubt; but I have come to a conclusion which leads me to invite your Lordships to allow the appeal. The facts can be shortly stated. In 1920 the Birmingham Corporation laid a new tramway track between Salford Bridge, Erdington, and the works of the Dunlop Rubber Co. They laid the track by direct employment of labour and it cost for labour and materials 54,732. By agreement in writing between the Dunlop Co. and the corporation dated April 19, 1920, the corporation agreed to construct the tramway; and the company agreed that if the corporation had completed the tramway and commenced a reasonable service on or before June 1, 1920, the company would pay the corporation 10,000, and a further sum of 50 a day for each day saved before Jun .....

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..... lated number of unemployed men had been employed and that wages had been paid up to or in excess of the amount of the promised grant. Payments were made by the committee on these applications in respect of these tramway tracks to the amount of 46,238, thus reducing the amount actually borne by the corporation to 225,161. The question that arises on these figures is as to the amount which the corporation is entitled to claim as an allowance for wear and tear in respect of these tramway tracks under Rule 6 of the rules of Cases I and II of the Income Tax Act, 1918. I will not read the rules but will premise that it is common ground that the corporation were entitled to an allowance for these tracks on the footing that they were new tra .....

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..... arose under sub-Rule 6. In the present case it arose in the case of the first tramway for the year 1930-31; in the case of the second tramway for the year 1931-32. The Inspector of Taxes claimed that the actual cost to the corporation must be measured by deducting from the total expenditure in the first case the amount paid to the corporation by the Dunlop Co., in the second case the amount of the Government grant. Added to the previous allowances the full allowances would make up for the years in question an aggregate in excess of the actual cost so ascertained. The question now is whether this meaning of actual cost to the person is correct. In my opinion the words the actual cost to the person by whom the trade is carried on .....

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..... d, that if the plant were sold the allowances would begin again on the value of the plant to the new owner. After this decision, and undoubtedly in consequence of it, there was passed in 1907 a section in the terms of the present sub-Rule 6. I entirely agree with the submission of the Attorney-General that you must not restrict the plain words of a remedial section so as to apply them only to the mischief which occasion the enactment. But you may look at the mischief as one of the elements assisting you to construe the words of the remedy. You may also look at the use of the same words in relation to the same subject-matter in the enactment. The words actual itself gives me no assistance. It serves, as counsel suggested, to give emphas .....

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..... for the appellants to the question put by Romer, L.J., would have been what he suggests. On the hypothesis that the Dunlop Co. had recouped the corporation the whole of the cost of the first tramway, I should have thought the answer to what did it cost you? or what did it actually cost you? would have been it actually cost us 54,732, but none of the burden of that cost will fall on the corporation for the Dunlop Co. have paid us the full amount . I think the same result is arrived at by saying actual cost to the person is the same thing as the amount expended by the person. One is assisted in this construction by consideration of the words at the end of subSection 6, which, as pointed out by counsel for the appellants, include in th .....

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