Findlater and Company v Attorney-General

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 30 July 1947
• Date: 30 July 1947
• Court: High Court

Findlater and Co., Ltd.

and

Attorney-General

- Licences for sale of wine, beer or spirits - Duty payable - Reduction of duty on wholesale dealer's licence obtained by person already holding retailer's licence - Whether both licences must relate to same premises -Whether holder of only one retailer's licence entitled to reduction of duty on more than one wholeale dealer's licence - Finance (1909-10) Act, 1910 (10 Edw. 7, c. 8), Sch. I, Part B, par. 4.

Paragraph 4 of the "Provisions applicable to Wholesale Dealers' Licences"in Part B of Sch. I of the Finance (1909-10) Act, 1910, provides as follows:—"Where a wholesale dealer's licence for the sale of any liquor is taken out by a person who is the holder of a licence authorising him to sell the same liquor by retail, the duty payable on the wholesale dealer's licence shall be reduced by fifty per cent. Provided that this provision shall not operate to reduce the total amount payable for the wholesale dealer's licence and the retailer's licence for any liquor below that payable for the wholesale dealer's licence alone." The plaintiffs, who were a firm of grocers and wholesale and retail beer, wine and spirit merchants, with a number of different places of business, had for some years obtained, by virtue of the above provisions, certain reductions of licence duty on foot of wholesale licences held by them in respect of several of their places of business by reason of their also holding a number of retail licences. In the year 1945 the Revenue Commissioners declined to issue more than one wholesale licence for the same kind of liquor at a reduced rate of duty on the ground that the plaintiffs were not entitled by virtue of the above provisions to more than one such licence at a reduced rate, and contended also that a wholesale licence at a reduced rate could only be issued in respect of...