Keeping house

In 1906 Lord Loreburn sitting in the House of Lords uttered these words on the matter of corporate residency:

“In applying the conception of residence to a company we ought I think to proceed as nearly as we can upon the analogy of an individual. A company cannot eat or sleep but it can keep house and do business. We ought therefore to see where it really keeps house and does business. An individual may be of foreign nationality and yet reside in the United Kingdom. So may a company. Otherwise it might have its chief seat of management and its centre of trading in England under the protection of English law and yet escape the appropriate taxation by the simple expedient of being registered abroad and distributing its dividends abroad.”

This maxim established in De Beers Consolidated...