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Cite as: [2000] IESC 37

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O'Connell, Inspector of Taxes v. Fyffes Banana Processing Ltd. [2000] IESC 37 (24th July, 2000)

THE SUPREME COURT

KEANE C.J.

MURRAY J.

HARDIMAN J.

139/99

BETWEEN:

PATRICK J. O’CONNELL, INSPECTOR OF TAXES

APPELLANT

AND

FYFFES BANANA PROCESSING LTD.

RESPONDENT

JUDGMENT delivered the 24th day of July 2000 by Keane C.J. [nem. diss.]

1. The appellant brought an appeal by way of Case Stated from a determination by the Appeal Commissioners allowing the respondent’s claim to manufacturing relief in respect of an assessment to corporation tax. In a reserved judgment, the High Court (Geoghegan J.) concluded that the Appeal Commissioners were correct in their determination and dismissed the appeal. From that decision, the appellant has now appealed to this court.

2. The relevant facts as found in the Case Stated are as follows. The respondent was incorporated in Ireland on 22nd January 1991. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of [*2] Fyffes Plc. and its business is the provision of what are described as “banana ripening services” to other companies within the Fyffes group. It had been held by this court in Charles McCann Ltd. .v. S. O Cualachain, Inspector of Taxes , (1998) IR 196, that the process of artificially ripening bananas was a manufacturing process and that, accordingly, tax relief which was only available to companies engaged in a manufacturing process was available to the company in that case. Following that decision, s. 39 (5) of the Finance Act 1980, as inserted by s. 41 (1)(c) of the Finance Act, 1990 provided that

“without prejudice to the generality of sub-s. (1) and subject to sub-s. (1A), (1B), (1C), (1CC), (lCC1), (1CC2), (1CC3), (1CC4), (1CC5), (1CC6) and (1CC7), goods shall not for the purposes of the definition of ‘goods’ in sub-s. (1) be regarded as manufactured if they are goods which result from a process-

(a) which consist primarily of any one of the following:...

(ii) applying methods of preservation, pasteurisation or maturation or other similar treatment to any foodstuffs or any combination of such processes...”

3. If the company in this case were engaged in the artificial ripening of bananas which were its own property, it is clear that their activities would be captured by this provision and that, accordingly, they would not be regarded as carrying on a manufacturing process for the purpose of obtaining tax relief.

[*3] The respondent in the present case, however, contends that his eligibility to such tax relief is governed solely by the provisions of sub-s. (2) of s. 39 which provides as follows:-

“Where a company carries on a trade which consists of or includes the rendering to another person of services by way of subjecting commodities or materials belonging to that person to any process of manufacturing, the following provisions shall apply for the purposes of relief under this chapter

(a) the rendering within the Sate of such services shall be regarded as the manufacture within the State of goods;

(b) any amount receivable in payment for services so rendered shall be regarded as an amount receivable from the sale of the goods...”

4. The contention advanced on behalf of the respondent, which was accepted as correct by the Appeal Commissioners and by the learned High Court judge, was that the effect of this provision was to entitle them to the appropriate relief, since they were subjecting commodities or materials belonging to another person to a process of manufacturing and the rendering of such a service was deemed by sub-section to be “the manufacture within the state of goods”. The provisions of sub-s. (5), which admittedly treated the artificial ripening of bananas as not being the manufacture of goods was of no relevance to the construction of sub-s. (2) which, it was urged, was a self-contained provision and had to be applied as such.

[*4] The provisions in question are contained in Chapter 6 of the Finance Act, 1980 which is headed

“Corporation Tax Relief in relation to certain income of manufacturing companies”.

Section 41(2), contained in that Chapter, provides, so far as material, that

“where a company which carries on a trade which consists of or includes the manufacturing of goods claims and proves as respects a relevant accounting period that, during that period, any amount was receivable in respect of the sale, in the course of the trade, of goods, corporation tax payable by the company for that period, so far as it is referable to the income from the sale of those goods”

is to be reduced by the amounts set out in the sub-section.

Section 39(1) provides that:

“In this Chapter ‘goods’ means goods manufactured within the State in the

course of a trade by the company which, in relation to the relevant period, is the company claiming relief under this Chapter in relation to the trade...”

5. On behalf of the appellant, Mr. Aston S.C. submitted that it was clear, from the wording of s. 39(5), that the restrictions on the meaning of the word “goods” provided for in the sub-section, were to apply to the word “goods”, wherever it appeared in s. 39, including sub-s. (1). Accordingly, a company engaged in the artificial ripening of bananas was not manufacturing “goods” within the meaning of sub-s. (1) and hence was [*5] not entitled to relief under s. 4 1(2). Sub-s. (2) was plainly intended to afford relief to a company which was subjecting goods belonging to someone else to a manufacturing process by deeming them to be the manufacturers of the goods within the meaning of sub-s. (1) for the purpose of obtaining relief. There was nothing in the wording of s. 39 to suggest that the expression “goods” should not be given the same meaning - including the restriction provided for in sub-s. (5) - in sub-s. (2) as in any other part of the section.

6. On behalf of the respondent, Mr. Thomas McCann S.C. submitted that it was clear that, on the facts as set out in the Case Stated, the respondent had never been engaged in the manufacture of goods but simply provided a service. Their claim to exemption, accordingly, derived solely from sub-s. (2) and they were not in any way affected by the provisions of sub-s. (5).

7. He further submitted that, as a result of a number of amendments to the original provision, s. 39 now included a number of special provisions (sub-s. (1CC etc.) which deemed various activities - such as the rendering of computer services - to be the manufacturing of goods, which would not normally be regarded as such. These provisions were properly construed without reference to the other provisions of the section as affording eligibility for relief to the companies carrying on the activities in question. Sub-s. (2) provided a similarly self-contained provision for affording relief to companies subjecting commodities or materials belonging to another person to a process of manufacturing.

[*6] If this case were to be decided on the basis of what was most probably the intention of the Oireachtas, however inaptly expressed, the appellant would be entitled to succeed. It seems highly unlikely that the legislature, while making it clear that the ripening of bananas did not constitute a manufacturing process for tax relief purposes, thereby reversing by statute the effect of the decision of this court in Charles McCann Ltd. .v. S. O Cualachain, Inspector of Taxes, should have decided that the tax relief would be available where the artificial ripening was carried out by a company on bananas belonging to another company. The learned High Court judge was of the view, however, with which I would agree, that such an approach is not permissible in the present case.

8. In the case of a taxing statute, it is, of course, the duty of the court to give effect to the intention of the legislature

“as that intention is to be gathered from the language employed, having regard to the context in connection with which it is employed.” (per Russell LCJ in Attorney General .v. Canton Bank (1899) 2 QB 158.)

9. There are, however, special considerations affecting the construction of a taxing statute which were explained as follows by Kennedy C.J. in The Revenue Commissioners .v. Doorley (1933) IR 750:-

“There is no a priori liability on a subject to pay any particular tax, nor any antecedent relationship between the taxpayer and the taxing authority, and, therefore, no reasoning founded upon any supposed relationship of the taxpayer and the taxing authority could be brought to bear upon the [*7] construction of the Act; Pryce .v. Monmouthsire Canal Company (4 App. Cas. 197 per Lord Cairns at p. 202)...

“A taxing act (including of course any other act or part of an act incorporated in it by reference), of its own proper character and purpose, stands alone, and is to be read and construed as it stands upon its own actual language... the duty of the court, as it appears to me, is to reject an a priori line of reasoning and to examine the text of the taxing act in question and determine whether the tax in question is thereby imposed expressly and in clear and unambiguous terms, on the alleged subject of taxation, for no person or property is to be subjected to taxation unless brought within the letter of the taxing statute, i.e. within the letter of the statute as interpreted with the assistance of the ordinary canons of interpretation applicable to Acts of Parliament so far as they can be applied without violating the proper character of taxing acts to which I have referred

“I have been discussing taxing legislation from the point of view of the imposition of tax. Now the exemption from tax, with which we are immediately concerned, is governed by the same considerations. If it is clear that a tax is imposed by the Act under consideration, then exemption from that tax must be given expressly and in clear and unambiguous terms, within the letter of the statute as interpreted with the assistance of the ordinary canons for the interpretation of statutes. This arises from the nature of the subject matter under consideration and is complementary to what I have already said in its regard. The court is not, by greater indulgence in delimiting the area of exemptions, to enlarge their operation [*8] beyond what the statute, clearly and without doubt and in express terms, excepts for some good reason from the burden of a tax thereby imposed generally on that description of subject matter. As the imposition of, so the exemption from, the tax must be brought within the letter of the taxing act as interpreted by the established canons of construction so far as applicable.”

10. The application of those principles to the present case must now be considered. It is not, of course, in dispute in the present case that the respondent is subject to corporation tax: the question is as to whether it is also entitled to the relief afforded by s. 41(2) of the Finance Act, 1980. We are here, accordingly, not concerned with a question as to whether a tax was imposed on the first place but rather with whether the respondent is entitled to a measure of relief in respect of the tax so imposed. As pointed out by the learned Chief Justice in the passage I have cited, relief of that nature must be given expressly and in clear and unambiguous terms.

11. The relief in this case, under the terms of s. 41(2), is afforded to a company which carries on a trade which consists of or includes “the manufacture of goods”. Section 39(1) provides that, throughout Chapter 6, including s. 41(2), the expression “goods” means

“goods manufactured within the State in the course of a trade by the company which, in relation to the relevant accounting period is the company claiming relief under this Chapter in relation to the trade...”

[*9] Those are the provisions by virtue of which the respondent is either entitled to relief or not so entitled. Sub-s. (5) goes on to provide that, without prejudice to the generality of sub-s. (1), goods are not, for the purposes of the definition of goods in sub-s. (1) to be regarded as manufactured if they are goods which result from a process which consist primarily of

“applying methods of... maturation or other similar treatment to other foodstuffs...”

12. Thus, far from any relief from taxation being afforded expressly or unambiguously under these provisions, it seems to me that the opposite is the case. The Oireachtas have said in plain and unambiguous language that goods such as bananas which are subjected to an artificial ripening process are not to be regarded as goods manufactured in the State for the purpose of section 41(2).

13. That conclusion is wholly unaffected in my view by the provisions of sub-s. (2). The intention of that sub-s. is quite clear: it is to treat a company which is subjecting commodities or materials belonging to another person to any process of manufacturing as a company engaged in the manufacturing of goods within the State. That provision, of itself, however affords no relief from corporation tax: the relief is conferred solely by s. 4 1(2). That relief is confined to a company carrying on a trade which includes “the manufacture of goods” and, by virtue of s. 39(1) and (5), a company engaged in the artificial ripening of bananas is not engaged in the manufacturing of goods and, accordingly, not entitled to the relief. A fortiori , a company which is engaged in an activity of artificially ripening bananas belonging to another person was clearly not [*10] intended to be treated as a company engaged in “the manufacture ofgoods” within the meaning of s. 41(2).

14. A company which produces goods by subjecting other people’s materials to a manufacturing process is not to be deprived of relief where the process would otherwise be regarded as the manufacturing of goods for the purposes of such relief. If one has regard solely to the language used in the sub-section, that is its only effect: it certainly cannot be said to confer in express and unambiguous terms relief from corporation tax in respect of the manufacturing of goods in a case such as the present.

15. I would allow the appeal and substitute for the order of the High Court an order answering the question posed in the Case Stated in the negative.