KANPUR JOURNALS LTD Vs. COMMISSIONER OF SALES TAX

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a reference made by the Revising Authority under Section 11 of the U. P. Sales Tax act.

(2.) THE assessees are publishers and printers, and in the course of their business as printers they accept orders from customers for job work such as receipt books, registers, letter heads and handbills which are printed in accordance with the requirements of their customers on paper supplied by the assessees. In the bills submitted by the assessees to their customers the price of the paper and the charges for printing are shown separately. In respect of the assessment year 1948-49 and the first nine months of the year 1949-50 the assessees were assessed to sales tax on the proceeds of sale of such job work. They challenged the validity of such assessments and the question which has been referred by the Revising Authority to this Court is whether the turnover of receipt books, registers, forms, letter heads, visiting cards and handbills printed to order when all materials -paper, ink, etc.-are supplied by the presses is assessable to sales tax ?

(3.) SECTION 3 of the U. P. Sales Tax Act, 1948, provides (subject to the provisions of the Act) for the payment by a dealer of sales tax on his turnover, and Section 4 provides that no tax shall be payable on, inter alia, books, magazines and newspapers and such other goods as the State government may by notification in the official Gazette exempt from time to time. Now by a notification under this section, No. ST. 199-X/928, which came into force on the 1st April, 1948, the State Government directed that the provisions of the Act should not apply to sales of various classes of goods, including as item No. 10 "paper and newsprint". This Notification however remained in force only for a short time as it was superseded on the 8th June, 1948, by another notification No. ST. 119-X/928-1948, which exempted from sales tax, again as item No. 10, sales of "paper meant for writing and printing.