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Captain
Oldfield
The Assistant Resident was also the local Income Tax
Collector. In 1901- 02 Captain Oldfield appears to have
spent most of his time trying to nail the Perim Coal
Company, his only major ‘client’, for tax evasion. The
basic problem was that the PCC’s standard argument was
that as tax was paid by Head Office in Liverpool on the
annual published accounts of the Company in the UK,
there was no liability for any Aden income tax. In a
letter to the Resident Oldfield complained the PCC had
never paid local income tax to the Aden Government nor
submitted a profit and loss account as published at
Liverpool, although repeatedly called upon to do so.
Perim Island
In fact this was not quite a true statement - the
Company had paid Aden income tax for at least two years
in the 1880s. From the PCC point of view the Liverpool
accounts did not bear too close a comparison with those
kept at Perim and often neglected to include all the
income from salvage work, which in a good year could be
a very significant amount. The Company was more or less
successful in parrying Oldfield but in the end agreed to
pay local tax on profits for the previous three years if
all years prior to the financial year 1898-99 were
forgotten about. The local profit and loss account
showed the profits as having been:
|
Amount |
Year |
|
£1089/3/7 |
1898-99 |
|
£1827/4/4 |
1899-1900 |
|
£5,715/10/7 |
1900-01 |
But Oldfield was still not happy that the accounts were
complete. In January 1902 he wrote to the Port Officer
in Aden requesting details of salvage operations
involving the Perim Coal Company so that he could verify
the entries in the profit and loss account. One major
salvage had caught his attention and he reported to the
Resident that he had heard that the PCC had received
£10,000 for its share in the salvage of the P&O liner
‘China’.
Eventually Oldfield wrote to the Managing Agent asking
him if it was true that this amount had been received.
Mr Turner’s reply was yes, it had, but as it had been
paid in Sterling directly to Hinton Spalding’s office in
Liverpool, therefore the transaction was of no concern
of the Assistant Resident. Fifteen all! No other
Assistant appears to have taken on the PCC over taxes
and the Company must have heaved a sigh of relief when
Oldfield was relieved. |
