Facts of The Case
The facts of the case are of less significance than the general principle which arose from it. However, in summary, they are:
- The three respondents, the Dawsons, were a father and his two sons. They owned two successful clothing companies called Fordham and Burton Ltd. and Kirkby Garments Ltd. (which are together called "the operating companies" throughout the case).
- A company called Wood Bastow Holdings Ltd. offered to buy the operating companies from the Dawsons, and a price was agreed.
- If the Dawsons had sold the operating companies direct to Wood Bastow the Dawsons would have had to pay substantial capital gains tax ("CGT").
- There was a rule that if a person sold his shares in Company A to Company B, and instead of receiving cash he received shares in Company B, then there was no CGT payable immediately. Instead, CGT would become payable when (if ever) that person later sold his shares in company B.
- With the intention of taking advantage of this rule to delay the payment of CGT, the Dawsons arranged for an Isle of Man company called Greenjacket Investments Ltd. to be formed. (It was intended to become "Company B".)
- The Dawsons sold the operating companies to Greenjacket Investments Ltd. in exchange for the shares of Greenjacket Investments Ltd.
- Greenjacket Investments Ltd. sold the operating companies to Wood Bastow Holdings Ltd.
Read more about this topic: Furniss V Dawson
Famous quotes containing the words facts of, facts and/or case:
“Whilst Marx turned the Hegelian dialectic outwards, making it an instrument with which he could interpret the facts of history and so arrive at an objective science which insists on the translation of theory into action, Kierkegaard, on the other hand, turned the same instruments inwards, for the examination of his own soul or psychology, arriving at a subjective philosophy which involved him in the deepest pessimism and despair of action.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)
“In spite of the air of fable ... the public were still not at all disposed to receive it as fable. I thence concluded that the facts of my narrative would prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The circumstances with which every thing in this world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape;—and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what it is—great—little—good—bad—indifferent or not indifferent, just as the case happens.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)