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.

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:

1898-1899 £1,089 3s 7d

1899-1900 £1,827 4s 4d

1900-1901 £5,715 10s 7d

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.