The Stamp Duty Act of 1853 required that a 1d. duty be paid on receipts of £2 or more; this duty was paid with revenue stamps. The Act of 1881 made it legal to pay those duties with postage stamps as well. In 1920 the duty was raised to 2d.

In order to prevent the theft of stamps intended for this fiscal use, some companies had overprints put on their stamps. This site lists the Irish commercial overprints that I am aware of, and shows examples where possible.

The style naming conventions used on this site are drawn from the excellent work of John Bonney and David Lane of the British Commercial Overprint Study Circle.

To view the overprints used by each company, click on the links to the left. If you know of other overprints or other issues, please contact me.

To learn more about Irish commercial overprints and the commercial overprints of other countries, visit the Commercial Overprint Society of Great Britain site.

In the pages that follow, you will see tables like this one:

Pattern	Style	SG. #162
The Canada Life Assurance Company		O

• The Pattern shows the wording of the overprint. The shape of the letters (serif or sans-serif) matches the overprint.
• The Style shows where the lines of the pattern appear on the stamp; the arrows show the direction of the text.
• The SG. # is the Stanley Gibbons' number of the stamp. Where you see GB #, the stamp is from Great Britain and used in Ireland. An "O" indicates a stamp that has been reported; an "X" indicates a stamp that I own.