In re Income Tax Act (Manitoba) / Thos. Jackson & Sons, Ltd. v. The Municipal Commissioner

J.-In the year 1935 the Manitoba Adminis.trator of Income Tax assessed the appellant, Thos. Jackson and Sons, Limited, for income tax in respect of moneys received by them in the year 1934 from the Nelson River Construction Company, Limited. The moneys so paid were dividends out of profits accumulated by the Nelson Company prior to the 31st December, 1929.

From the decision of the Administrator the appellants appealed unsuccessfully to the Municipal Commissioner, to Mr. Justice Dysart in the Court of King's Bench of Manitoba and from there to the Court of Appeal in Manitoba where its appeal was unanimously dismissed. It is from that Court that this appeal is now brought to us. The Manitoba income tax law originally applied only to individuals but in 1930 it was amended to apply to companies as well.

The material charging section in the amendment then passed, and still in force, is 8 (4) reading as folows:

This section taken by itself is clearly sufficient to author- Hudsn ize the assessment of the appellants.

There was also inserted in the amendments of that year a section, 4 (p), reading as follows:

This section read by itself clearly would not exempt the appellants from the liability created by 8 (4).

Read literally it applies only to profits in the hands of the accumulating company and would not relieve the beneficiaries on any distribution.

But it is argued, and with some force, that if section 4 (p) is read literally and section 8 (4) given its full effect, the result would be that 4 (p) would be wholly unnecessary, and the real intention of the Legislature must have been to relieve corporate shareholders from the tax which they would otherwise be liable for under 8 (4), and that effect should be given to this intention.

However, in the absence of some more definite expression of intention by the Legislature, in my opinion we cannot hold that a clear and specific charging section is limited by an exempting section which, read literally, does not impose such a limitation. The mere fact that the effect might be to render the exempting section altogether ineffective is not sufficient to overcome the language of the statute. The appeal is dismissed with costs.

Appeal dismissed with costs.