STATE OF TAMIL NADU Vs. ANANDAM VKWANATHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Special leave granted in Special Leave petitions (C) Nos. 10539, 4704 and 921 of 1978. These appeals by leave under Article 136 of the Constitution, are from the orders of the High Court of Madras, involving a common question though for different assessment years. It would be appropriate to deal with Civil Appeals Nos. 234547/78, and the facts in other appeals are essentially the same.

(2.) The assessee in these cases had entered into contracts with the Universities and other educational institutions in the country for printing question papers for the said educational institutions. The assessee in the demand notes prepared, gave the charges for printing, blocks, packing charges, handling charges, delivery charges, postage, value of paper and value of packing materials separately in the relevant assessment years. The question involved is, whether the taxable turnover should also include the printing and block-making charges or not. It appears from the judgment of the High Court that for the assessment year 1966-67, the printing charges amounted to Rs. 99,675.00 and block-making charges amounted to Rs. 2,923.95, totalling Rs. 1,02,598.95. Similarly, so far as the assessment year 1968-69 is concerned, the printing charges amounted to Rs. 1,33,137/-and block-making charges amounted to Rs. 5,361.75 totalling Rs. 1,38,498.75.

(3.) The controversy involved in these appeals was whether these two amounts were includible in the assessable turnover of the respondent in the respective years in question. The case of the assessee was that the contract entered into between her and the respective educational institutions was a contract of work and labour and in the performance of that contract, incidentally she had to sell paper to them and, hence, except to the extent of the cost of paper, in respect of the other amounts received by her she was not liable to pay sales-tax. On the other hand, the Government's stand was that the contract was for the sale of printed materials by the respondent to the respective educational institutions and, therefore, the entire amount will have to be taken into account as turnover liable to tax. In other words, would printing question papers and incidentally supplying the papers upon which such questions were printed, entail the entire cost to be liable to sales-tax. As was put before us, the question is, can one sell printed question papers and charge for the same