释义 |
market value Inheritance tax is charged on the market value of property at death and capital gains tax is charged on the market value of an asset at the time of disposal. In both cases, statute gives only a cryptic definition of the term “market value” and its meaning has been established by a line of cases. Lord Hoffmann gave a good summary of the process of determining market value in IRC v Gray [1994] STC 360 (CA) at 371–72: “Certain things are necessarily entailed by the statutory hypothesis. The property must be assumed to have been capable of sale in the open market .…[The] hypothesis must be applied to the property as it actually existed.…The hypothetical vendor is an anonymous but reasonable vendor.…The hypothetical buyer is slightly less anonymous. He too is assumed to have behaved reasonably.…The concept of the open market involves assuming that the whole world was free to bid and then forming a view about what in those circumstances would in real life have been the best price reasonably attainable.” |