From: Ronald Raygun 
Subject: Re: Defintion of 'quarters' for Discretionary Trust purposes
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 09:08:32 GMT

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?