|
Capital Allowances |
21 |
(c) Planteria |
Gray v Seymour’s176 involved what might loosely be called a high-tech glasshouse used in a garden centre. As Nourse LJ stated: |
‘‘While the cold frames which formerly provided a similar function to that of the planteria might well have been plant, the same cannot be said of the planteria itself. It is a structure to which plants are brought already in a saleable condition, albeit that some of them tend to be in there for quite considerable periods and others require special treatment.... The fact that the planteria provides the function of nurturing and preserving the plants while they are there cannot transform it into something other than part of the premises in which the business is carried on. The highest it can be put is that it functions as a purpose-built structure. But...that is not enough to make the structure plant.’’ |
24A.2.4.4 Defining Setting |
The distinction between setting and plant depends in part upon the degree of sophistication to be employed in the concept of a setting.177 The problem is acute when electrical apparatus and wiring are concerned.178 The matter must be resolved by the use of the functional test so that, for example, while lighting will not usually be plant, it will become so if it is of a specialised nature, as where it is designed to provide a particular atmosphere in a hotel; this must be judged by reference to the intended market.179 The Revenue has consistently refused to treat wiring leading to such apparatus as plant. List A places mains services and systems of electricity generally in the category of assets which cannot qualify as plant, while List C allows electrical systems provided mainly to meet the particular requirements of the trade or to serve particular plant or machinery used for the purposes of the trade.180 |
24A.2.4.5 Case-Law Survey |
The case-law distinction between buildings and apparatus is, perhaps inevitably, indistinct. Relatively recent cases have shown that items which cannot be plant under the case-law test include a prefabricated building at a school used to accommodate a chemical laboratory,181 a canopy over a petrol station182 (although this has since been doubted183), an inflatable |