Finance Act 1956

38 Annuity contracts and life insurance policies

(1) An instrument being a grant or contract for payment of a purchased life annuity shall be chargeable with stamp duty under paragraph (3) of the heading " Bond, Covenant or Instrument of any kind whatsoever " in the First Schedule to the Stamp Act, 1891, and not otherwise, whether or not the annuity is a superannuation annuity as defined in that paragraph.

(2) Where, in the opinion of the Commissioners, any body of persons carrying on the business of granting life annuities or the business of issuing policies of life insurance so carries on that business as to render it impracticable or inexpedient to require that the stamp duties chargeable on grants or contracts for payment of such annuities or on policies of life insurance should be charged and paid on such instruments issued by the body in the course of that business, the Commissioners may enter into an agreement with that body for the delivery to the Commissioners of periodical accounts giving such particulars as may be required of those instruments.

(3) The agreement shall be in such form and shall contain such terms and conditions as the Commissioners think proper.

(4) Where an agreement has been entered into under this section between the Commissioners and any body of persons, any instrument to which the agreement relates and which contains a statement that the appropriate stamp duty has been or will be paid to the Commissioners in accordance with the provisions of this section shall not be chargeable with any stamp duty, but the aggregate of the sums which, but for the provisions of this subsection, would have been chargeable by way of stamp duty on any such instruments issued during the period to which any account delivered under the agreement relates shall, by way of composition, be paid by the body to the Commissioners on the delivery of the account.

(5) Where a body makes default in delivering any account required by any such agreement or in paying the duty payable on the delivery of any such account, the body shall be liable to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds for every day during which the default continues and shall also be liable to pay to Her Majesty, in addition to the duty, interest thereon at the rate of five per cent. per annum from the date when the default begins.

(6) In this section " purchased fife annuity" means a life annuity granted for consideration in money or money's worth in the ordinary course of a business of granting annuities on human life.

(7) This section shall have effect from the first day of August, nineteen hundred and fifty-six ; and any agreement made before that date under section seventy-two of the Finance Act, 1948 (which in relation to industrial assurance policies makes provisions similar to those of subsections (2) to (5) of this section), shall be treated as having been made under this section.