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54
CUSTOMS AND INLAND REVENUE ACTS, 1890 & 1891.
Provisions as to Inhabited House Duty upon Houses Constructed in Separate
Dwellings.
By the Customs and Iuland Revenue Act, 1890 (53 Vict., Ch. 8), it is
provided : —
" 26.—(1) Where any dwelling-house chargeable to inhabited house
duty under the said Act of the fourteenth and fifteenth years of Her
Majesty's reign, chapter thirty-six, at the rate of ninepence, or at
the reduced rate of sixpence or threepence, according to this Act, for
every twenty shillings of annual value is occupied in any year by a
person for the main purpose of letting furnished lodgings therein as
a means of livelihood, it shall be lawful for such person before the
first day of July to register his name in a list of lodging-house
keepers to be kept by the Clerk to the Commissioners acting in the
execution of the Acts relating to the inhabited house duties, and,
after such registration and before the first day of October, to make
application to the said Commissioners for the reduction of the rate
of charge of inhabited house duty from ninepence to sixpence, or for
the further reduction of the reduced rate of sixpence to fourpence, or
of threepence to twopence, and on due proof of the facts to the satisfaction
of the said Commissioners they shall cause the charge or
amount for such year to be reduced or amended accordingly.
" (2) The assessment to inhabited house duty of any house originally
built or adapted by additions or alterations and used for the sole purpose
of providing separate dwellings for persons at rents not
exceeding for each dwelling the rate of seven shillings and sixpence
a week, and occupied only by persons paying such rents, shall be
discharged by the said Commissioners, provided that a certificate of
the medical officer of health for the district in which the house is
situate or other medioal practitioner, appointed as hereinafter provided,
shall be produced to them to the effect that the house is so
constructed as to afford suitable accommodation for each of the
families or persons inhabiting it, and that due provision is made
for their sanitary requirements. The medical officer of health of a
district on request by the person who would be liable to pay the
house duty on any house in the district, if the duty were not discharged
as aforesaid, shall examine the house for the purpose of
ascertaining whether such a certificate can properly be given, and if
the house be constructed so as to afford such accommodation and due
provision be made as aforesaid, shall certify the same accordingly ;
provided that the authority, if they are of opinion that the duties
which would devolve on the medical officer of health under this section
could not be performed by him without interference with the
due performance of his ordinary duties, may appoiut some other