Auction agent turnover is not taxable where the agent lacks authority to transfer property in goods and completes sale only on owner consent.

A co-operative society was not treated as a dealer liable on the disputed auction turnover because it lacked authority to transfer property in the goods. The court noted that the member's produce could not be sold without the member's consent, and the auction was completed only when the agriculturist accepted the price offered. Mere custody or dominion over the goods was therefore insufficient to make the society's turnover taxable as its own. The disputed receipts were not the society's own taxable turnover, and no assessment could be sustained on that basis.

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Issues: Whether the assessee co-operative society was a dealer within the meaning of section 2(g) of the Tamil Nadu General Sales Tax Act, 1959, and whether the disputed auction turnover represented its own taxable turnover.

Analysis: The statutory definition of dealer covered persons carrying on business in buying, selling, supplying or distributing goods, including mercantile agents and societies dealing with members. Liability, however, depended on whether the assessee had entered into a sale arrangement that gave it authority to transfer property in the goods. On the facts found, the produce of a member could not be sold without that member's consent, the auction was completed only when the agriculturist accepted the price offered, and the society acted only after obtaining such acceptance. Mere custody or dominion over the goods was therefore insufficient, because there was no authority in the society to transfer property in the goods.

Conclusion: The assessee was not liable to be assessed on the disputed turnover, and the turnover could not be treated as the society's own taxable turnover.

Ratio Decidendi: A mercantile or auction agent is assessable only where it has authority to transfer property in the goods and effect the sale; mere dominion over the goods without such authority does not make the resulting turnover taxable as the agent's own turnover.

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