Personal signature requirement in tax returns prevails when the statute and forms exclude signing through an agent.

A fiscal return requiring an individual's signature was held to need the assessee's own personal signature under the Bengal Agricultural Income-tax Act, 1944 and the prescribed forms. The statute and rules expressly allowed authorised representation for specified matters such as attendance, evidence, appeals, applications and service of notices, but made no equivalent provision for signing returns. Reading the scheme as a whole, the Court held that the common law rule allowing signature through an agent was excluded by necessary implication. Where the law requires a personal signature, the signature or mark must be made by the person himself.

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Issues: Whether a return required to be signed by an individual assessee under the Bengal Agricultural Income-tax Act, 1944 and the Rules could be treated as valid when the assessee's name was written by his son, and whether the statutory scheme excluded the common law rule permitting signature through an agent.

Analysis: The statutory provisions and prescribed forms were examined together. The Act expressly permitted representation or action through an authorised representative for specified purposes such as attendance, production of evidence, presentation of appeals and applications, and service of notices, but contained no corresponding provision authorising an agent to sign the return. Rule 11 and Form 5 required that the declaration in the return be signed in the case of an individual by the individual himself, while the appeal and application forms elsewhere in the Rules expressly provided for signatures by both the party and, where applicable, an authorised representative. This contrast, together with the absence of any general provision assimilating returns to pleadings signed through agents, showed an intention to require personal signature where the return was concerned. The majority further held that where the statute requires a personal signature, the signature or mark must be that of the person himself, with physical contact between the person and the signature or mark; the common law rule that one may act through another was therefore excluded by necessary implication. The dissenting opinion treated the question as one of physical contact and record evidence, and considered that on the material before the Court the assessee could not be said to have been shown not to have personally signed.

Conclusion: The return was not validly signed through the son as an agent, and the statutory requirement of personal signature was mandatory; the issue was decided against the assessee and in favour of the Revenue.

Final Conclusion: The appeal succeeded, the High Court's answer was set aside, and the referred question was answered in the negative, with no order as to costs against the assessee.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a fiscal statute and its prescribed forms, read as a whole, require an individual's signature and separately provide for authorised representation in other matters, the requirement of signature is to be treated as personal and the common law rule allowing signature through an agent is excluded by necessary implication.

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