Vehicle Earned £2,000 Outside Normal User
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THE secretary of a haulage company admitted at Sheffield, on Tuesday, that an A-licence vehicle which had been operated outside the terms of its normal user had earned £2,000 in 11 months. He was Mr. R. Baxter, of G. Baxter (Haulage), Ltd., Stannington Road, Sheffield. The company were applying to take over part of an A licence held by Mrs. N. Darnell, Chesterfield, and to change the vehicle's base from Chesterfield to Sheffield.
Mr. Baxter explained that Mrs. Darnell, who was elderly, had been paid £700 for the vehicle and £450 for part of the goodwill. In 11 months it had worked five days a week carrying steel from Sheffield to the Midlands, with Baxter's providing the driver and keeping the receipts.
Cross-examined by Mr. T. B. Atkinson, for British Railways, he said steel was not one of the commodities on the vehicle's normal user, which allowed only a local radius. He had known since January that the vehicle was not supposed to run to the Midlands with steel every day.
Answering the Yorkshire Deputy Licensing Authority, Mr. J. H. A. Randolph, he said he did not know whether Mrs. Darnell had any customers at the time Baxter's agreed to buy the vehicle. Mr. Randolph said he could not understand how Baxter's could claim to have bought half a business when they provided the customers themselves.
Mr. Atkinson submitted that the agreement was in complete defiance of the licensing laws. Through irregular operation, Baxter's had made a handsome profit out of the transaction in 11 months, knowing well they were doing wrong.
The application was refused.
TAX CUT BID FAILS
A-N amendment to the Finance Bill seeking to halve the purchase tax on goods-vehicle chassis was rejected in the House of Commons on Tuesday by 202 votes to 167.
Mr. Ernest Davies, proposing the amendment, advanced familiar supporting arguments, and said that the tax could no longer be defended as a discouragement to excessive investment in commercial vehicles.
Mr. Gerald Nabarro (Cons., Kidderminster) favoured complete abolition of the tax, and submitted that the cost to the Treasury of doing so would be offset by the annual income-tax allowances. The total of these allowances equalled the capital cost of the vehicle, and in effect the buyer advanced an interest-free loan to the Treasury.
" it is a means for extracting money from businesses which should be employed as capital resources," he stated, Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, SolicitorGeneral, said that Mr. Nabarro's contention took no account of the effect on sales which a tax reduction would have. The amendment would cut tax revenue by £7fm. a year, an amount which could not be afforded.