BPR is due

The deceased had been the managing director and major shareholder of a trading and property development company. The company had developed and sold 256 flats in north London between the 1950s and the early 1970s. In the 1970s it moved into small community shopping centre developments. However one development ran into problems regarding planning permission so the company put up poor quality industrial workshops and let them on short-term leases. The idea was that they would be demolished when the development could proceed.

HMRC said that business property relief under IHTA 1984 s 105(3) would not apply to the deceased's shares in the company as the business was the making or holding of investments.

The executors appealed.

The Special Commissioner said that a company as the one in question which acquired land with a view to developing it was not a land-dealing company. A...