SUCCESSION DUTIES. For many years persons succeeding to personal property (including leaseholds) whether they took by will as executor*, or legatees, or merely as administrators or next of kin, were charged with Legacy Ditties, which wero payable over and above the stamp duty, then and still levied in the first. instance, on the grant of probate or letters of administration, according to the estimated sworn value of the personal property of the deceased, The legacy duty was chargeable after the estate of the deceased had been realised and adiniuistered, on the property distributed among the legatees or next of kin, as the cane might be; and varied in amount, according to the consanguinity of the next of kin, or the absence of any relationship between the legatee and the testator. The exemption of real estate from this species of taxation long complained of as creating an undue preference in favour of the holders of landed property, has st last been removed. By the Succession Duties Act, 1853, duties are imposed on every succession to property, whether real or personal, according to the value and the relationship of the parties to the predecessor.
Where the successor is the lineal issue or lineal ancestor of the predecessor, I/. per cent.; where a brother or sister, or a descendant of a brother or sister, 31. per cent. ; where a brother or sister of the father or mother, or a descendant of the brother or sister of the father or mother of the predecessor, 51. per cent. ; where a brother or sister of the grandfather or grandmother, or a descendant of the brother or sister of the grandfather or grandmother of the predecessor, 6/. per cent. ; and where the successor is in any other degree of collateral con sanguinity to the predecessor, or is a stranger in blood to him, le/. per cent. The value of the succession, if it be to real property, is ascertained by considering the interest of the successor as of the value of an annuity equal to the annual value of the property, estimated as the act directs; and the duty may be paid by eight equal half-yearly instalments, or at once, according to the wish of the party liable thereto.