Separate dealer registration bars clubbing of spouses' turnovers absent express statutory authority for amalgamated assessment.

Separate registration of a husband and wife as dealers under the Sales Tax Act precluded clubbing of their turnovers for assessment. The statute allowed each dealer to be assessed separately and contained no express provision equivalent to section 64 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, authorising aggregation of spouses' business turnovers merely because they formed a Hindu undivided family unit. The Andhra Pradesh HC therefore upheld separate assessments, held the clubbing illegal, and rejected the Revenue's challenge.

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Issues: Whether the turnovers of a husband and wife, separately registered as dealers under the Sales Tax Act, could be clubbed and assessed together on the footing that they constituted a single Hindu undivided family unit.

Analysis: The husband and wife were separately registered as dealers, one carrying on manufacturing business and the other trading business. The Sales Tax Act permitted separate registration of each dealer, and there was no provision comparable to section 64 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, enabling clubbing of the turnovers of husband and wife for assessment purposes. In these circumstances, the basis for amalgamating the two assessments was absent.

Conclusion: The clubbing of the turnovers was illegal and the separate assessments could not be disturbed; the revision by the Revenue failed.

Final Conclusion: Separate assessment of the husband and wife as registered dealers was upheld, and the Revenue's challenge to the order of the Tribunal was rejected.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a sales tax statute permits spouses to be separately registered as dealers and contains no express provision authorising clubbing of their turnovers, the assessments cannot be amalgamated merely because they are members of a Hindu undivided family.

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