Cattle-feed exemption turns on substance and use: mineral mixture used as cattle supplement qualifies as a taxable-free concentrate.

A mineral mixture called super-mindif qualified as cattle-feed or other concentrate under Entry 6 of Schedule A to the Bombay Sales Tax Act, because the real test was its substance and use. The entry was read broadly, and a feed supplement used for body building, improved milk yield, health maintenance, blood formation and better utilisation of protein feed could fall within it. Its description as a tonic did not prevent exemption, since the article remained a cattle nourishment product in substance. On that basis, super-mindif was treated as exempt from sales tax and the assessment could not stand.

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Issues: Whether the preparation known as super-mindif fell within Entry 6 of Schedule A to the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1953 as a cattle-feed or other concentrate and was therefore tax-free.

Analysis: Entry 6 exempted cattle-feeds, including fodder and other concentrates, while excluding cotton seed. The question was whether super-mindif, a mineral mixture prepared with ingredients such as calcium, phosphorus, sodium chloride and other minerals, could reasonably be treated as a concentrate used for feeding cattle. The material on record showed that mineral mixtures were accepted supplements to cattle feed and that super-mindif was used for body building, improving milk yield, maintaining health, blood formation and better utilisation of protein feed. The fact that it was described as a tonic did not exclude it from being cattle-feed, because the real test was its substance and use. The entry was intended to be wide, and there was no basis to confine the word concentrates to articles produced by a technical process of concentration.

Conclusion: Super-mindif was held to fall within Entry 6 of Schedule A and was therefore exempt from sales tax.

Final Conclusion: The assessment order could not stand, and the exemption claim succeeded.

Ratio Decidendi: For the purpose of a tax exemption entry covering cattle-feeds and other concentrates, the true test is whether the article, in substance and use, is a feed or feed supplement for cattle; a mineral mixture used for cattle nourishment may qualify as a concentrate even if it is also described as a tonic.

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