Legal representative recovery under sales tax law requires prior demand notice before coercive enforcement or default treatment.

A legal representative of a deceased dealer is treated as the dealer under the Kerala General Sales Tax Act, but that fiction does not by itself make him an assessee-in-default for coercive recovery. Recovery under the Act requires an antecedent demand notice and a subsequent default in payment; without that statutory step, coercive action against the legal representative is unauthorized. Amounts collected without compliance with the demand requirement were therefore refundable, subject to adjustment against any tax later found due from the same person in his own capacity. The excess recovered over that liability had to be returned.

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Issues: (i) Whether the legal representative of a deceased dealer could be treated as an assessee-in-default and subjected to recovery without a separate notice of demand under the Kerala General Sales Tax Act, 1963; (ii) whether the amount recovered coercively from the legal representative was liable to be refunded, with relief being adjusted against any tax subsequently found due from him in his own capacity.

Issue (i): Whether the legal representative of a deceased dealer could be treated as an assessee-in-default and subjected to recovery without a separate notice of demand under the Kerala General Sales Tax Act, 1963

Analysis: Section 20 creates a fiction that the legal representative is treated as the dealer for purposes of the Act, but the fiction does not extend to treating him as an assessee-in-default merely by reason of the dealer's prior default. Recoverability under section 23 depends on a demand notice and a subsequent default in payment. The liability fastened on a legal representative is limited to the assets of the deceased in his hands, and before coercive recovery is undertaken he must be given an antecedent demand so that questions of status, assets, and liability can be adjudicated. Without such demand, the recovery machinery under the Act cannot be set in motion against the legal representative.

Conclusion: The legal representative could not be treated as an assessee-in-default or subjected to recovery without a separate notice of demand.

Issue (ii): Whether the amount recovered coercively from the legal representative was liable to be refunded, with relief being adjusted against any tax subsequently found due from him in his own capacity

Analysis: Coercive recovery made without compliance with the statutory demand requirement was unauthorized and inconsistent with the constitutional mandate that tax be levied and collected only by authority of law. The recovery also offended the equality and liberty guarantees invoked in the judgment. At the same time, the Court noted that a smaller sum had subsequently been assessed as payable by the petitioner in his own capacity, and the relief was therefore adjusted to avoid refunding an amount in excess of what remained legally due.

Conclusion: The petitioner was entitled to refund of the excess amount recovered, after setting off the tax subsequently found due from him.

Final Conclusion: The appeal succeeded, the recovery was held unlawful for want of a demand on the legal representative, and the refund was confined to the excess over the petitioner's own assessed liability.

Ratio Decidendi: A legal representative becomes recoverable for the deceased dealer's tax only after a demand is served on him and he defaults in payment; the statutory fiction does not, by itself, make him an assessee-in-default for coercive recovery.

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