SIMPLICITY ENGINEERS Vs. COMMISSIONER SALES TAX NEW DELHI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) M/s. Simplicity Engineers were registered as dealers under the Bengal Finance (Sales Tax) Act, 1941, as extended to the Union Territory of Delhi ("the Act" ). They manufactured and sold electric furnaces and allied equipment. The electric furnaces which they manufactured were used for baking or drying or other heat treatment processes in the ceramic and electrical industries. As need hardly be said, these furnaces operated on electricity.

(2.) AT the relevant time, the sales of goods specified in Schedule I of the Act were chargeable to tax at a higher rate than other goods. Item 18 of Schedule I was as follows : " Electrical goods other than electrical plant, equipment and their accessories including service meters required for generation, transmission and distribution. "

(3.) IN Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Taxes, Madurai Division v. Ravi Auto Stores [1968] 22 STC 172 (Mad.), the uselessness of the test was almost acknowledged, though not expressly. That again was a decision of the Madras High Court. The question now was whether welding electrodes were "electrical goods". It was contended for the revenue that "since the welding electrodes cannot be used except with the application of electrical energy" they should be regarded as electrical goods. The court said : " IN our view, the argument lays too much stress on the user of the article with electrical energy. That, no doubt, is a test for purposes of entry 41, but is not the only test. Before applying that test, the goods must be capable of classification as electrical goods. Though the words are easily understood in common parlance, it is one of those cases which are more easily understood than defined satisfactorily. "