 In general, this payment meant that the recipients of the dividend were considered to have already paid basic rate tax on the dividend income.Non-taxpayers, such as pension funds, who would not otherwise have paid income tax on the dividend income, became entitled to claim a refund of the ACT amount, or after 1993 a lesser amount.The refund of ACT for non-taxpayers was scrapped in 1997, and in 1999 the ACT was itself scrapped, effectively making dividend income of non-taxpayers tax-free again.