Salient points of differences between the Death and Donation Duty Act 1973 and previous legislation

Abstract

The Death and Donation Duty Act 1973, though substituting the previous legislation, has not completely done away with it on the same subject, in the sense that the new Act itself is broadly based in the Succession and Donation Duties Ordinance (Chapter 70 of the 1942 Revised Edition of the Laws of Malta). There has obviously been an amount of updating in order to ensure that this important sphere off fiscal legislation is workout efficiently, as well as to provide for present day needs. The result of this has been the drawing up of a more concise law which has thus avoided the request repetitions found in the older law. This repetitions were not only instrumental in rendering previous legislation unnecessarily longer but had also contributed to a certain amount of confusion and doubts. More often than not, the older law had several sections touching the same matter section (Sections 52, 105, 106, 70 and 71) whilst these have been whittled down to two sections in the new law (Section 9 and 14).