Taxation

Income tax - relief for child maintenance paid through Child Support Agency - not available after mother's remarriage ending in divorceNorris (Inspector of Taxes) v Edgson: ChD (Park J): 8 May 2000

In 1982, a daughter was born to the taxpayer and his wife.

In 1984, they divorced, the daughter living with her mother.

The mother remarried, but in 1992 that marriage ended in divorce.

In 1996, the Child Support Agency assessed the taxpayer to pay maintenance.General commissioners upheld his claim for relief under s.347B of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 (inserted by s.36 of the Finance Act 1988) for payments he thereafter made.

The Crown appealed.Kate Selway (instructed by Solicitor of Inland Revenue) for the Crown.

The taxpayer in person.

Held, allowing the appeal, that s.347B of the 1988 Act gave relief for a 'qualifying maintenance payment' defined as a periodical payment 'made by one of the parties to a marriage (including a marriage that has been dissolved...) to the other party for the maintenance by the other party of any child of the family;' that by s.347B(1)(c)(ii) such a payment remained a 'qualifying maintenance payment' only if 'the party to whom or for whose benefit the payment is made has not remarried;' that under s.347B(9) payments made to the Child Support Agency under a maintenance assessment were treated as having been made by the taxpayer to his former wife for the maintenance by her of their daughter; but that the condition in s.347B (1)(c)(ii) was not fulfilled in circumstances where the taxpayer's former wife had remarried notwithstanding that that marriage had ended before the assessment by the Agency was made.