Strict construction of sales tax liability prevents extending a deceased dealer's tax burden to heirs by implication.

Under the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1953, the charging provision was read as fastening liability on the dealer as a living person, and the absence of an express provision extending tax liability to heirs or legal representatives meant succession to a deceased dealer's business could not be treated as taxable continuation. The statutory references to transfer, registration, cancellation and related liability were construed as applying to voluntary inter vivos transfers, not succession by operation of law. The assessment and demand founded on the deceased dealer's liability and the heir's alleged succession were treated as a composite, inseverable order and were liable to be quashed together.

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Issues: (i) Whether, under the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1953, the heir or legal representative of a deceased dealer could be assessed to sales tax on the footing that the business was continued after the dealer's death. (ii) Whether the assessment and demand, being founded on the deceased dealer's alleged liability and the heir's alleged succession, were severable so that part of the order could survive.

Issue (i): Whether, under the Bombay Sales Tax Act, 1953, the heir or legal representative of a deceased dealer could be assessed to sales tax on the footing that the business was continued after the dealer's death.

Analysis: The definition of dealer and the charging provision fastened liability on the dealer as a living person, and nothing in the Act expressly extended that liability to heirs or legal representatives. The provisions dealing with transfer, intimation, registration, cancellation, and liability on transfer were construed as applying to voluntary transfers inter vivos between transferor and transferee, not to succession by operation of law. The scheme of the Act and Rules distinguished death from transfer, and the later enactment of 1959 was noticed as making an express provision where none existed in the 1953 Act. In taxing legislation, ambiguity cannot be resolved by intendment in favour of the revenue.

Conclusion: No; the heir or legal representative was not liable to be assessed under the 1953 Act on the basis of succession to the deceased dealer's business.

Issue (ii): Whether the assessment and demand, being founded on the deceased dealer's alleged liability and the heir's alleged succession, were severable so that part of the order could survive.

Analysis: The assessment was made throughout on the footing that the deceased dealer's liability had devolved upon the petitioner as heir and continued business successor. It was not an independent assessment of the petitioner as a dealer in its own right. As the foundation of the order failed, the order was treated as a composite and inseverable whole.

Conclusion: The assessment order and demand notice were not severable and had to be quashed in their entirety.

Final Conclusion: The petition succeeded, the assessment and demand were annulled, and recovery was restrained with costs.

Ratio Decidendi: A charging provision in a fiscal statute must be strictly construed, and in the absence of an express statutory provision, liability to tax on a deceased dealer's business cannot be extended to an heir or legal representative by treating succession as a voluntary transfer.

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