7 Application to certain taxing statutes of Age of Majority Act, 1985

The Age of Majority Act, 1985 provided in section 2(1) that with effect from 1 March, 1985 the age of majority was reduced from 21 years to 18 years, or earlier where a person marries before 18 years of age. The Age of Majority Act, 1985 also provided in section 2(2) that, in the absence of a definition or an indication to the contrary, for the purposes of any rule of law terms such as “age of majority”, “full-age”, “infancy”, “infant”, “minor”, “minority” and other cognate works and expressions in any statutory provision passed or made before, on or after 1 March, 1985, are to be construed in accordance with section 2(1) of that Act. Section 2(3) of the Age of Majority Act, 1985 provides for references to the age of 21 years in any statutory provision passed or made before 1 March, 1985 to be deemed to be references to full age (that is, 18 years or earlier where a person marries before 18).

Originally the Income Tax Acts and any other statutory provision dealing with the imposition, repeal, remission, alteration or regulation of any tax or other duty under the care and management of the Revenue Commissioners were excluded from the application of the Age of Majority Act, 1985 by virtue of section 2(4)(b)(vii) of that Act. This exclusion was terminated by the Finance Act, 1986 with effect from 6 April, 1986, except in the case of personal income tax reliefs for widowed parents and other single parents (now section 462B) and incapacitated children (now section 465) where a reference to age 21 years was retained so as to preserve entitlement to these reliefs for certain persons. Section 7 merely reaffirms this position.

Relevant Date: Finance Act 2021