Income Tax Act 2007 section 692

Abnormal dividends: general

Section 692 defines what constitutes an "abnormal dividend" and identifies who has authority to make that determination.

• A dividend is classified as abnormal if either the "excessive return condition" or the "excessive accrual condition" is satisfied.
• The excessive return condition is defined in section 693, and the excessive accrual condition is defined in section 694.
• The determination of whether a dividend is abnormal is made by an officer of Revenue and Customs (i.e. the HMRC officer dealing with the particular case).
• In practice, HMRC restricts the exercise of these functions to a small group of specialist officers, and this arrangement continues unchanged.