Statutory rebate prevails over general remittance rule where a compliant dealer satisfies the prescribed sales and delivery conditions.

Section 8 of the General Sales Tax Act granted a rebate on sales of notified finished industrial articles actually delivered outside the State, subject to the prescribed conditions and registration requirements, and the rebate was to be worked out at final assessment. Section 11(2), requiring tax collections in excess of tax paid to be remitted to the Government, was treated as a general rule against retaining tax collected for one's own benefit. That general remittance obligation did not override the specific rebate conferred by section 8, because the rebate was intended to encourage the prescribed sales and deliveries and would be frustrated if denied after compliance. A compliant dealer could therefore claim the rebate despite having collected amounts as tax.

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Issues: Whether the rebate of one-half of the tax under section 8 of the General Sales Tax Act was available to a dealer even where amounts had been collected by him as tax, or whether section 11(2) required such collections to be paid over to the Government so as to defeat the claim to rebate.

Analysis: Section 8 granted a rebate on sales of notified finished articles of industrial manufacture actually delivered outside the State, subject to the prescribed conditions and registration requirements. The scheme of the Act and the rules showed that the rebate was worked out at final assessment and could operate as a return of amounts provisionally paid. Section 11(2), which required amounts collected as tax in excess of tax paid to be paid over to the Government, was treated as embodying the ordinary rule against a person in a fiduciary position using collections for his own benefit. It was held that this provision did not cut down a specific benefit expressly conferred by section 8, because the rebate was designed to induce the prescribed conduct and would be defeated if denied after compliance.

Conclusion: Section 11(2) did not preclude the dealer from claiming the rebate under section 8, and the rebate was allowable in favour of the assessee.

Ratio Decidendi: A general obligation to remit tax collections to the State cannot override a specific statutory rebate expressly granted to a compliant dealer for the prescribed sales and deliveries outside the State.

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