Common parlance test excludes specialised hospital equipment from metal furniture classification for sales tax purposes.

Specialised hospital equipment sold to hospitals and the Medical and Health Department was held not to be "metal furniture" for sales tax purposes. Applying the common parlance and popular sense test, the tribunal treated hospital cots, lockers, stretchers, wheel chairs, operating tables, food wagons, commode chairs and examination chairs as articles designed primarily for medical function, not for furnishing premises. Because their ordinary understanding in trade and among consumers was that of medical equipment rather than furniture, they were taxable only at the general residuary rate and not at the higher rate applicable to metal furniture.

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Issues: Whether hospital cots, bedside lockers, stretchers, stretcher trollies, wheel chairs, operating tables, food wagons, commode chairs and examination chairs sold to hospitals and the Medical and Health Department were classifiable as "metal furniture" and taxable at the higher rate, or whether they were taxable at the general rate as residuary items.

Analysis: The competing authorities showed divergent approaches to whether specialised hospital equipment could be treated as furniture. The decisive consideration adopted was the meaning of "furniture" in common parlance and the popular sense in which the trade and consuming public understand the expression. Articles designed primarily to serve medical functions and kept out of functional necessity, rather than to furnish premises or make them well-appointed, do not answer the description of furniture merely because they may resemble chairs, tables or cots in form. On that construction, the hospital articles in question were found to be specially designed medical equipment and not items of metal furniture.

Conclusion: The items were not exigible to tax as "metal furniture" and were liable only at the general rate.

Ratio Decidendi: Classification of goods for sales tax purposes must follow the common parlance or popular sense test, and an article specially designed for functional use in medical treatment is not furniture unless it is ordinarily understood as such.

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