One of the things I love about law and religion is the ubiquity of the subject. Religion pervades every area of human life, and so can be relevant to every sort of legal interaction. That is one of the reasons I remain nervous about the development of a canon of the subdiscipline of law and religion. Religious freedom law around Article 9 and the Human Rights Act is extremely important; as is equality law around the Equality Act. But there is more to the interaction of religion and law than this. So my eye is always caught by articles appearing off the beaten track for the field – for instance this case-note in (1995) Farm Tax Brief February 14.
The case-note deals withi R v Sheffield Housing Benefits Review Board (The Times, 28 December 1994). The case concerned members of a religious group, which required its adherents to live in community houses on terms which included obligations of a “spiritual and domestic nature”. If the tenancy was “otherwise than on a commercial basis”, housing benefit would not be paid. Blackburne J held that in assessing whether there was a commercial basis, it was important to look at the arrangements as a whole, and not just to look at the rent payable. This approach is endorsed by the Farm Tax Brief case-note writer, who suggests that it may usefully be applied to areas more directly relevant to their readership, especially around inheritance tax where “it is sometimes necessary to be able to show whether a transaction, particularly one within the family, has been undertaken on what might be regarded as commercial terms”.
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