Expanded definition of business includes non-profit canteen sales, and statutory duty does not negate taxable sales.

An expanded statutory definition of "business" under sales tax law can include trade or commerce even where the activity is carried on without profit motive and no actual profit accrues; the earlier profit-motive test is not decisive. Sales of food and drink in a canteen maintained under a statutory obligation remain taxable sales where price, supply and consideration are present and the parties still transact with sufficient mutual assent. A legal duty to run the canteen does not, by itself, destroy the contractual character of each sale or exclude the activity from business for sales tax purposes.

---

---

Issues: (i) Whether the absence of profit motive in the canteen sales excluded the transactions from the concept of business under the sales tax law. (ii) Whether sales of food and drink in a canteen maintained under a statutory obligation were not sales because they were made under compulsion of law.

Issue (i): Whether the absence of profit motive in the canteen sales excluded the transactions from the concept of business under the sales tax law.

Analysis: The earlier line of cases treated business in a commercial sense and linked it to a motive to earn profit. The amended definition of business in the sales tax enactment, however, expressly widened the concept so that trade, commerce or an activity of that nature would fall within business whether or not carried on with a motive to make gain or profit and whether or not profit actually accrued. The Court held that the word "such" in the later part of the definition carried the expanded meaning forward, so the earlier profit-motive test could no longer control. The absence of profit motive was therefore not decisive.

Conclusion: Proof of profit motive was unnecessary to constitute business.

Issue (ii): Whether sales of food and drink in a canteen maintained under a statutory obligation were not sales because they were made under compulsion of law.

Analysis: A statutory obligation to maintain a canteen and to serve food on a non-profit basis did not eliminate the elements of sale where the parties still entered into transactions with price, supply and receipt of consideration. The Court distinguished cases where statutory directions left no room for offer, acceptance or mutual assent. Here, the factory and the workers dealt directly at each sale, and the statute and rules left substantial discretion as to the goods to be served, the prices, the timing and related matters. The Court held that compulsion of law is not coercion in the contractual sense, and that a transaction is not stripped of contractual character merely because it is carried out to satisfy a legal duty.

Conclusion: The canteen transactions were sales and constituted business for sales tax purposes.

Final Conclusion: The writ petitions failed because the canteen sales were taxable sales arising in the course of business, notwithstanding the statutory obligation to maintain the canteen and the non-profit character of its operations.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a taxing statute expands the definition of business so as to exclude the necessity of profit motive, and the transactions still involve supply for consideration with sufficient mutual assent and contractual elements, sales effected in a statutorily required canteen remain taxable sales.

---