BALLABHDAS GOKULDAS Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE applicant firm is a wholesale dealer in cigarettes. During the period to which this application relates, it was the firm's practice to show separately in the cash memorandums or bills presented to their constituents (a) the price proper and (b) an amount termed sales tax, calculated on (a) at the rate specified in the Act. In making his assessment, the Assistant Commissioner of Sales Tax included (b) in the gross turnover he determined for the firm. The firm's contention is that (b) could not properly form part of the gross turnover and should have been excluded. The Sales Tax Commissioner upheld the Assistant Commissioner's order; and the same question that was at issue in the Courts below has been raised here too.

(2.) THE learned counsel representing the Sales Tax Commissioner urged that the question has already been settled in Bata Shoe Co. v. Member, Board of Revenue, West Bengal ([1949] 1 S.T.C. 193; 53 C.W.N. 278). The applicant's learned counsel was not sure whether the facts of the West Bengal case were identical with those of the case before us. We have carefully gone through the Calcutta High Court judgment mentioned above and, in our view, the facts in both cases are exactly similar. What is equally important is that the relevant provisions of our Act and of the west Bengal Act are also similar. This applies particularly to the definition of 'sale price' contained in Section 2(h) of our Act. 'Turnover' in Section 2(j) of our Act has been defined rather more comprehensively than in the corresponding Section 2(i) of the West Bengal Act, but the basic idea is the same, namely, that it means, "the aggregate of the amounts of sale prices and parts of sale prices received by a dealer." 'Turnover', as defined in Section 2(j) of our Act, is, in actual practice, in assessment proceedings and the like referred to as 'gross turnover', in order to distinguish it from 'taxable turnover' mentioned later in the same Section 2(j). Now, in the West Bengal case, it was held that 'sale price' as defined includes any amount charged or realised separately as sales tax from the purchaser by the dealer. Further, it was held that 'gross turnover' contemplated by Section 4 of the West Bengal Act (which is referred to simply as 'turnover' in Section 4 of our Act) has to be ascertained by taking the aggregate of the amounts of sale price and parts of sale price received by the dealer with the inclusion of all amounts charged and realised as sales tax by the dealer. This decision, in our view, settles the question involved in the case before us. We do not consider it necessary to repeat the reasons which led the Calcutta High Court to come to this decision. We consider that they hold good, in their entirety, to cases arising out of our Act.

(3.) IN the result, this application for revision fails and is dismissed.