From: David Floyd 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: Re: Defintion of 'quarters' for Discretionary Trust purposes
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 12:16:55 +0100

In message of Tue, 23 May 2006, Ronald Raygun writes
>Peter Saxton wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 14 May 2006 12:21:10 GMT, Ronald Raygun
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>>For programming purposes, then, it doesn't matter how you define your
>>>Quarter Days.  A nice touch might be to shift them by 11 days from
>>>the traditional ones, which is why the start of the tax year changed
>>>after 1752 from 25th March to 6th April, so your other three Quarter
>>>Days might be 4th July, 10th October, and 5th January.
>>
>> 12 days!
>
>Ah, bit of a sore point.  There seems to be a spot of inconsistency
>among historical claims from various sources.  You are of course correct
>in pointing out that a shift from 25th March to 6th April is by 12 days.
>
>However, since the calendar lost only 11 days between Wednesday 2nd and
>Thursday 14th September 1752, only an 11, not 12, day shift can be
>justified.
>
>The only explanation which seems to make sense, then, is that the shift
>was from 25th March to 5th April, and that would imply that Lady Day
>must have been the end, not the start, of the tax year.
>
>Could it have been both, with the boundary at mid-day?
>

Would the fact that 1752 was a leap year have any effect?