Definition
A request note is a written application submitted to excise or inland revenue authorities seeking permission to remove dutiable or excisable goods from one location to another without immediate payment of the applicable duty or excise tax. The note functioned as a procedural instrument within English customs and excise administration, allowing goods to be transported under official sanction pending settlement of tax obligations.
The term belongs to English revenue law and administrative practice rather than to private law or commercial transactions. It is not a negotiable instrument, a promissory note, or a debt obligation — despite superficial similarity in name to other instruments that carry the word "note."
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "In the inland revenue, an application to obtain a permit for removing excisable articles."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not appear to carry a dedicated entry for "request note" as a compound term.
The ordinary word "note" in commercial and legal contexts almost universally suggests a written promise to pay money — a promissory note, a demand note, a treasury note. A request note is neither a promise to pay nor a negotiable instrument of any kind. It is a government-facing application or permit request. Researchers encountering "request note" in historical English documents should resist the instinct to classify it among financial instruments.
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Common Confusion
Request note is sometimes misread by researchers as a species of promissory note or commercial paper because of the shared word "note." The confusion is purely superficial. A promissory note evidences a private debt obligation and may be transferred between parties. A request note is an administrative submission to a revenue authority and has no commercial transferability or debt-creating function. The two instruments operate in entirely different legal universes.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily encountered in historical English legal sources, particularly in materials touching on excise law, customs administration, and inland revenue practice. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should be alert to several navigational issues:
First, the term is essentially extinct in modern legal usage. Contemporary excise and customs regimes in the United Kingdom and its former jurisdictions have replaced the request note with statutory permit systems, bonded warehouse documentation, and duty suspension procedures under modern revenue legislation. Encountering "request note" in a source is a reliable signal that the document predates significant revenue law reform.
Second, Black's Law Dictionary's entry cross-references Courts of Requests, a distinct historical institution. That cross-reference is incidental — Courts of Requests were small-claims tribunals with no functional connection to request notes in the excise sense. Do not follow that cross-reference expecting relevant context on revenue procedure.
Third, because the term sits within English administrative and revenue law rather than commercial law, researchers should look to treatises on excise practice, inland revenue manuals, and administrative histories of English taxation rather than to commercial law sources. The Law Mind commercial law and negotiable instruments materials will not illuminate this term.
Fourth, jurisdictional reach is narrow. This is a term of English law. Researchers working in American, Scottish, or colonial legal sources are unlikely to encounter it in this precise sense, though analogous permit or removal systems existed in other revenue regimes under different names.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the core definition concisely: "A note requesting permission to remove dutiable goods from one place to another without paying the excise." The Wiktionary formulation is substantively identical, framing it as an inland revenue application for a removal permit.
Neither source elaborates on the procedural mechanics — what authority issued the permit, what conditions attached to removal, or what consequences followed from transport without a valid request note. Historical sources on English excise administration would need to supply that context. Black's does not situate the term within the broader structure of excise law, and no secondary dictionary on the Law Mind shelf appears to add depth beyond the base definition.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit: any discussion of the term's evolution, whether it was codified in specific revenue statutes, or how enforcement interacted with the note's issuance. Researchers needing that context will need to look beyond dictionary sources entirely.
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Jurisdictional Note
Request note is a term of English revenue and excise law. Its application is historically specific to the English inland revenue system. Researchers working in American, Commonwealth, or modern UK tax law contexts will not encounter the term in operative legal texts and should treat it as a historical artifact of pre-reform English administrative practice.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The request note is not a negotiable instrument and does not bear on promissory note doctrine or debt securities law. However, researchers who arrived at this entry while tracing "note" as a commercial instrument type should consult:
Negotiable Instruments — Types (Notes, Drafts, Checks, Certificates of Deposit), The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia
Corporate Finance — Debt Securities (Bonds, Debentures, Notes), The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia
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