Personal liability of society members cannot be imposed for tax assessed on the society without express statutory authority.

Members of a registered society are not personally liable for income-tax assessed on the society where the statute constituting the society gives it a separate legal identity, limits enforcement of judgments to the society's property, and excludes members' personal liability. A mere description of the society as an association of persons under the income-tax law does not override that statutory position. In the absence of express income-tax legislation imposing personal liability, recovery cannot be made from members individually. Section 44 was noted as relevant only on discontinuance or dissolution, which was not established for the years in question.

---

---

Issues: Whether members of a registered society can be made personally liable for income-tax assessed on the society as an association of persons.

Analysis: The society was registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, under which it could sue or be sued in the name of specified office-bearers, judgments against such persons could be enforced only against the property of the society, and members could not receive profits on dissolution. These provisions showed that the society had a legal identity separate from its members and that no personal liability attached to them for the society's debts. The reference to the society as an association of persons under the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922 did not displace the substantive legal position created by the statute constituting the society. In the absence of any specific provision in the income-tax law imposing such liability, section 44 could apply only where there was discontinuance or dissolution, which had not been established for the relevant years.

Conclusion: Members of the society were not personally liable for the tax assessed on the society, and the demand against them for the relevant assessment years could not stand.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a statute creating a society excludes personal liability of members and confines enforcement to the property of the society, income-tax assessed on the society cannot, without express statutory authority, be recovered personally from its members merely because the society is described as an association of persons.

---