ABSTRACT
There is no definition of ‘trade or business’ in the 1927 Act; nor can any assistance be found in the definition of ‘business’ contained in the 1954 Act. Some assistance is found in s 17 of the 1927 Act, so that premises which are regularly used for carrying on a profession are deemed, for improvement purposes, to be premises used for carrying on a trade or business (s 17(3) of the 1927 Act). In addition, the business of sub-letting residential flats is expressly excluded (s 17(3)(b) of the 1927 Act). Some assistance is also found from case law. Thus, it has been said that a person carries on a trade or business when he ‘habitually does and contracts to do a thing capable of producing profit’ (Erichsen v Last (1881) 8 QBD 414, CA, per Cotton LJ). It has, however, also been said that someone carrying on a trade need not make or desire to make a profit (Re Duty on Estate of Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales, Re (1888) 22 QBD 279, per Coleridge CJ). In Town Investments Ltd v Department of the Environment [1978] 1 All ER 813, Lord Kilbrandon said (at 835) that ‘business’ denoted the carrying on of a serious occupation, not necessarily confirmed to commercial or profit-making undertakings, and included government administrative functions.
