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Lee Yee Shing And Another v Commissioner Of Inland Revenue

Judgment Cited authorities 23 Cited in Precedent Map Related
Vincent
Judgment Date31 January 2008
Year2008
Citation[2008] 3 HKLRD 51; (2008) 11 HKCFAR 6
Judgement NumberFACV14/2007
Subject MatterFinal Appeal (Civil)
CourtCourt of Final Appeal (Hong Kong)
FACV000014/2007 LEE YEE SHING AND ANOTHER v. COMMISSIONER OF INLAND REVENUE

FACV No. 14 of 2007

IN THE COURT OF FINAL APPEAL OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

FINAL APPEAL NO. 14 OF 2007 (CIVIL)

(ON APPEAL FROM CACV NO. 180 OF 2006)

_____________________

Between:

LEE YEE SHING and YEUNG YUK CHING Appellants
- and -
THE COMMISSIONER OF INLAND REVENUE Respondent

____________________

Court : Mr Justice Bokhary PJ, Mr Justice Chan PJ, Mr Justice Ribeiro PJ, Sir Noel Power NPJ and Mr Justice McHugh NPJ
Date of Hearing : 10 January 2008
Date of Judgment : 31 January 2008

______________________

J U D G M E N T

______________________

Mr Justice Bokhary PJ and Mr Justice Chan PJ :

Assessments in question

1. Usually it is the Revenue who says that activities amount to the carrying on of a trade or business and the taxpayer who says that they do not. This time it is the other way round. These appellants (“the Taxpayers”) are husband and wife who each declared salaries income and jointly elected for personal assessment. They tried to persuade the Revenue that the husband’s losses on dealings in securities and futures had been incurred in the carrying on by him of a trade or business and ought therefore to be deducted when computing their total income. The Revenue was not persuaded that those dealings amounted to the carrying on of a trade or business. So the assessments in question, being the personal assessments on the Taxpayers for the years of assessment 1993/94 to 1997/98, were computed without deducting those losses.

2. Thus it is the Taxpayers who assert and the Revenue who denies that the husband’s dealings in securities and futures amounted to the carrying on of a trade or business within the meaning of the general profits tax charging provision, namely s.14(1) of the Inland Revenue Ordinance, Cap.112. This subsection reads :

“ Subject to the provisions of this Ordinance, profits tax shall be charged for each year of assessment at the standard rate on every person carrying on a trade, profession or business in Hong Kong in respect of his assessable profits arising in or derived from Hong Kong for that year from such trade, profession or business (excluding profits arising from the sale of capital assets) as ascertained in accordance with this Part.”

Section 2(1) of this Ordinance provides that unless to context otherwise requires :

“ ‘business’ includes agricultural undertaking, poultry and pig rearing and the letting or sub-letting by any corporation to any person of any premises or portion thereof, and the sub-letting by any other person of any premises or portion of any premises held by him under a lease or tenancy other than from the Government”; and that
“ ‘trade’ includes every trade and manufacture, and every adventure and concern in the nature of trade”.

3. Contending that the husband’s dealings in securities and futures did amount to the carrying of a trade or business, the Taxpayers appealed to the Board of Review (“the Board”) against those assessments. They failed before the Board, the High Court (Burrell J) and the Court of Appeal (Rogers VP, Le Pichon JA and Barma J). And they are now before this Court.

What the Board of Review concluded and why

4. What the Board concluded appears from the first question it posed for the opinion of the High Court. By this question the Board asked in terms whether it was open to it to conclude that the assessments appealed against were not excessive or incorrect. Why the Board so concluded appears from the second question it posed for the opinion of the High Court. By this question the Board asked in effect whether it was entitled to reject the Taxpayers’ contention that the husband’s losses on dealings in securities and futures had been incurred in the carrying on by him of a trade or business and ought therefore to be deducted when computing their total income.

5. Those two questions raise a single issue. It is the ultimate issue between the parties. And it is, quite simply, whether the Taxpayers are right in their contention that the true and only reasonable conclusion is that the husband’s dealings in securities and futures amounted to the carrying on of a trade or business.

Additional findings

6. Before addressing that issue, it is necessary to deal with a question of additional findings.

7. Section 69(4) of the Inland Revenue Ordinance, Cap.112, provides that the High Court “may cause a stated case to be sent back for amendment and thereupon the case shall be amended accordingly”. In Consolidated Goldfields plc v. IRC [1990] STC 357 at p.361g-h Scott J (as Lord Scott of Foscote then was) addressed the proper approach to a request for a case stated to be sent back for additional findings to be made or to be considered. He warned against countenancing what he condemned as “nit-picking”. As to the proper approach to such requests, he said that “[i]f the case stated is full and fair, in that its findings broadly cover the territory desired to be dealt with by the proposed additional findings, the court should … be slow to send the case back”.

8. The parties to an appeal by way of case stated should be given an adequate opportunity to put forward their views as to what ought to be included in the case to be stated. And such views should be duly considered by those who state the case. But neither party alone nor even both parties in unison can insist on the case being stated in a particular form or terms. That has been clear in Hong Kong since at least 1911 when Re an Arbitration between Sander, Wieler & Co. and The Wing On Firm (1911) 6 HKLR 102 was decided. At p.105 Sir Francis Piggott CJ said that the duty of those called upon to state a case is to state it so “that it shall cover the case submitted”. As to what a case stated must contain in order to be regarded as sufficiently covering the issues, the present appeal provides the Court with a welcome opportunity to recognise the utility for Hong Kong’s purposes of the practical guidance offered by Scott J in the Consolidated Goldfields case.

9. In the present litigation, the question of additional findings arose and evolved in the following unusual way. Shortly before the hearing of their appeal to the High Court, the Taxpayer’s took out a summons by which they asked Burrell J to send the case stated back to the Board and direct the Board to make additional findings on :

“ (i) The activities and circumstances of [the husband] in incurring the losses the subject matter of the appeal, including particulars of all of his securities and future index transactions in the tax years 1990/91 to 1997/98 inclusively;
(ii) The nature and circumstances of [the husband’s] relationship with Y.S. Tide Limited, particularly his beneficial ownership and control of that company;
(iii) Y.S. Tide Limited’s securities and future index transactions in the tax years 1990/91 to 1997/98 inclusively, and the tax treatment of those transactions.”

In support of this summons, the Taxpayers filed an affirmation, being that of one Lo Chun Pong dated 14 March 2006. A number of documents were exhibited to this affirmation. These documents included two statements by the husband, a record of his transactions and a record of the transactions of Y S Tide Ltd (“YST”).

10. It is asserted in the Taxpayer’s printed case that :

“ A feature of the appeal is that the Judge, in lieu of dealing with an application to have the Case remitted for the finding of additional facts, agreed – with the consent of the parties – to look at a portion of the documentary evidence. This evidence is set out under the Affirmation of Lo Chun Pong dated 14th March, 2006.”

That is not what Burrell J says had happened. In his judgment he says :

“ After hearing submissions from Mr John J.E. Swaine for [the Taxpayers] and Ms Jennifer Tsui for [the Revenue] it transpired that the extra ‘findings’ which Mr Swaine submitted were necessary for an intelligible hearing of the appeal could, in fact, be easily gleaned from the Board’s decision and were not, in any event, controversial or disputed. Once this was established Mr Swaine agreed to withdraw the summons. The order on the summons is ‘Summons withdrawn with costs in the cause of the appeal’.
As a result the further facts upon which this appeal proceeded (in addition to the Case Stated but not in any way amending it) were :
(a) that the buying and selling of shares and futures undertaken by [the husband] and [YST] during the years in question and which were considered by the Board did in fact take place;
(b) that [the husband] was the 100% owner and controller of YST; and
(c) that YST’s trading was disclosed to the Revenue at all material times and was accepted.”

11. The Board incorporated its decision within the body of the case which it stated. As pointed out earlier, the two questions posed in the case stated raise the single issue of whether the Taxpayers are right in their contention that the true and only reasonable conclusion is that the husband’s dealings in securities and futures amounted to the carrying on of a trade or business. Apart from formal matters and those two questions, the case stated consists simply of a recital of the Board’s decision. So those so-called further facts are not really additional to the case stated. Moreover, as one sees from Burrell J’s judgment, they are neither controversial nor disputed.

12. At the hearing of the appeal to this Court, Mr J J E Swaine for the Taxpayers indicated that he also wished to refer to the “statistics”, as he called them, mentioned in para.17(iv) and (vii)(a) to (e) of the Taxpayers’ printed case. Mr Jennifer Tsui for the...

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