Stamp Act 1854

XIX Indeminty from penalties for omitting to state the full Purchase Money in Assignments on the sale of Goodwill.

Whereas by an [48 G. 3. c. 149.] Act passed in the Forty-eighth Year of the Reign of King George the Third, Chapter One hundred and forty-nine, certain Penalties and Disabilities were imposed upon the Parties to any Deed or Instrument of Conveyance of Property upon Sale, wherein the full Purchase or Consideration Money directly or indirectly paid or secured or agreed to be paid should not be truly expressed and set forth, and also upon the Attorney, Solicitor, Writer to the Signet, or other Person employed in or about the preparing of any such Deed or Instrument: And whereas the Sale of a Trade or Business, or the Goodwill thereof, has been erroneously considered by some Persons not to be a Sale of Property within the Meaning of the Acts imposing ad valorem Stamp Duties on the Conveyance thereof, and the Instruments whereby Property of that Description, or whereby certain Messuages, Lands, or other Property wherein or whereupon such Trade or Business has been carried on, has or have been in such Cases assigned, transferred, or otherwise conveyed to or become vested in a Purchaser may not have been stamped with the full and proper Duties with which the same were by Law chargeable, and in some Instances 'the Purchase or Consideration Money has been omitted to be fully and truly expressed and set forth as required by Law in such Instruments, by reason whereof the Parties to such Instruments, and the Attorney, Solicitor, Writer to the Signet, or other Person employed in or about the preparing of the same, may have incurred the Penalties, Forfeitures, and Disabilities in that Behalf mentioned in and imposed by the said Act of the Forty-eighth Year of King George the Third, and it is expedient that they should be relieved therefrom, and that such Instruments should be rendered available in Evidence: Be it enacted, That in any such Case as aforesaid the Parties to any such Instrument made and bearing Date on or before the Fifteenth Day of June One thousand eight hundred and fifty-four, and every Person employed in or about the preparing of the same, shall be and they are hereby declared to be respectively freed, discharged, and indemnified from and against any Penalties, Forfeitures, and Disabilities contained in or imposed by the said last-mentioned Act which may have been incurred by reason of any Omission to express or set forth in any such Instrument the full and true Purchase or Consideration Money upon the Sale of the Property thereby conveyed, transferred, assigned, or assured, or vested in the Purchaser ; and all such Instruments shall be available in Evidence notwithstanding the full and proper ad valorem Duties which ought to have been paid in respect of the Purchase or Consideration Money therein expressed for the Conveyance, Transfer, or Assignment of any such Trade, Business, or Goodwill shall not have been paid and denoted thereon.