Common parlance meaning of books supported sales tax exemption for stitched or stapled book-form articles.

Lottery tickets, share certificates, share applications, C forms and similar articles supplied in stitched or stapled book form were treated as exempt "books" under the sales tax notification for periodicals and printed books for reading. The Court applied the common parlance meaning of "books" and focused on the form in which the goods were supplied at the taxable stage, holding that unity of design created by stitching or stapling was sufficient and that later separation of leaves by the consumer did not defeat the exemption. It also rejected the contention that earlier decisions on exemption for "all books and periodicals" required reconsideration, and the show cause notices and provisional assessments were quashed.

---

---

Issues: Whether lottery tickets, share certificates, share applications, C forms and similar articles supplied in stitched or stapled book form were exempt as "books" under the sales tax exemption notification, and whether the earlier decisions holding that "all books and periodicals" were exempt required reconsideration.

Analysis: The exemption notification issued under section 9(1) of the Andhra Pradesh General Sales Tax Act, 1957 exempted sales of periodicals and printed books for reading. The Court applied the common parlance meaning of "books" and the earlier construction of the exemption in prior decisions. It held that the relevant test was the form in which the goods were supplied at the taxable stage. Since the articles were ordered and supplied in book form, with the required unity of design achieved by stitching or stapling, they could not be denied exemption merely because individual leaves might later be separated at the consumer stage. The Court also rejected the argument that the earlier decisions required reconsideration.

Conclusion: The articles supplied in book form fell within the exemption, the earlier precedents were affirmed, and the show cause notices and provisional assessments were quashed.

---