DECIMAL POSTAGE STAMPS USED TO PAY STAMP DUTY ?????!!!!!

[Ross Ewington]

These cheques have been sitting in my "too hard basket" for a number of years. I have
at least two more .....somewhere in my office!



They have all been issued by the office of The Public Trustee 1968/70 and came from a hoard
accumulated many years ago by a former Commonwealth Bank employee (i.e. they are not ex-Craig).
They are all to different payees and have been presented at different Tasmanian banks.

The amount of stamp duty that was "paid" using a decimal postage stamp appears to correlate
well with the value of the cheque and the year of issue.

Can anyone shed some light on this apparently irregular usage? In addition to my examples (5)
I have seen others over the years as well as off-paper decimal stamps from the 1966-70 period
with pen cancels.

[Revenuer]

Ross you would have to check the Tasmanian Stamp Duty Act. It may mention payment by postage stamps.

In Qld there is no such provision in the act and would be deemed as irregular use i.e. bank staff to lazy to walk to the bank to buy duty stamps.

But you could pay your phone bill etc with postage stamps, how this was accounted for by the PO I am not sure.

I have Taxation sheets paid and accepted by postage stamps, when the act states only tax stamps are to be used. I will dig them out and post…. Dave

[Ross Ewington]

...and another


.....any thoughts yet .....anyone

[Revenuer]

I have Taxation sheets paid and accepted by postage stamps, when the act states only tax stamps are to be used. I will dig them out and post…. Dave

Better late than never!

tax1.jpg (131.84 KiB) Viewed 1884 times

[bill]

In response to Ross's query re decimal postage stamps on receipts.

This usage is almost certainly illegal. I recall seeing a 4c Queen of 1966
being used to pay duty on a receipt (in Melbourne). (This was before the
High Court said that State duty on receipts was an "excise", whatever
that may be, and was not lawful under the Constitution since only the
Commonwealth may levy an "excise" on transactions.

In any case, the money paid for the postage stamps would not go to the
State that levied the stamp duty in question. The Commonwealth would
get the revenue from the postage stamps, not the State that was trying to
levy a stamp duty on the said transaction.

Hence, there seems to be no lawful reason for such usage. Perhaps the
user simply didn't bother to obtain the necessary duty stamps, which were
readily available from post offices as a convenience of the public.

I have seen a cheque like the ones on the BB but with a predecimal postage
stamp thereon, along with examples of the Tasmanian 1955 duty series.

As above, somebody just didn't bother to obtain the right stamps!!! It is
more than likely that similar usages exist for the mainland States.

[Ross Ewington]

Some thoughts and embedded questions.

I assume that all cheques issued in Tasmania in the 1960s would have had the stamp duty pre-paid
except in the case of government cheques (there was no point in collecting stamp duty and then paying it to "oneself").
N.B. none of the cheques have STAMP DUTY PAID TASMANIA (or words to that effect printed thereupon) that you find
on commercial and private cheques from the period.

Is this a reasonable assumption? (the state government may have "collected" stamp duty from itself as an accounting practice)

Normally, the presentation of a cheque (with stamp duty pre-paid) within the state would not have incurred a further imposition of stamp duty. Cheques
from interstate were subject to stamp duty but in the case of TAS government cheques to Tasmanian residents, did the payee have to pay the duty?

Part of the text on the reverse of each cheque reads "...and is a receipt for the purposes of the Stamp Duty Act 1931". Could there
be a "clue" within this act? Does anyone have a copy of any relevant clause that they could post here?