Retrospective validating sales tax amendment governs pending references and applies assessment-year rates to previous-year turnover.

A retrospective validating amendment to the sales tax law applies to a pending reference where the liability is to be determined under the law as amended, and a retrospective enactment governs the legal position the Legislature has directed to operate at the material time. Where an assessee elects assessment on the basis of the previous year's turnover, the validating provision deems that turnover to be the turnover of the assessment year and subjects it to the rates prevalent in that year, including proportionate application where rates change during the year. The amended legal fiction displaces the earlier view that the rate crystallised at the start of the assessment year.

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Issues: (i) Whether a retrospective validating amendment to the sales tax law had to be applied while answering a reference pending before the Court; (ii) whether an assessee who had elected to be assessed on the basis of the previous year's turnover was liable to tax at the rates prevalent during the assessment year as modified by the validating amendment.

Issue (i): Whether a retrospective validating amendment to the sales tax law had to be applied while answering a reference pending before the Court.

Analysis: The amendment inserted a new provision with express retrospective effect and declared that assessments, proceedings and levies made under the earlier understanding of the law were to be treated as valid. A reference court is bound to apply the law as it stands when the liability is to be determined, including a statutory change made operative retrospectively, so long as the reference question is wide enough and no fresh facts are required. A retrospective enactment does not amount to answering a different question; it gives effect to the legal regime that the Legislature has directed to be treated as existing at the material time.

Conclusion: The retrospective validating amendment was applicable and had to be taken into account.

Issue (ii): Whether an assessee who had elected to be assessed on the basis of the previous year's turnover was liable to tax at the rates prevalent during the assessment year as modified by the validating amendment.

Analysis: The validating provision required that, where the previous-year basis of assessment had been chosen, the turnover of that year be treated as the fictional turnover of the assessment year and be subjected to the rates prevalent during the assessment year. If the rate changed during the assessment year, the altered rate was to apply proportionately for the corresponding period in the previous year. This displaced the earlier view that the rate crystallised on the first day of the assessment year.

Conclusion: The assessee was liable to be assessed at the rates prevalent during the assessment year in accordance with the retrospective amendment.

Final Conclusion: The appeal succeeded, and the assessee's challenge to assessment at the altered rate failed under the validating law given retrospective effect.

Ratio Decidendi: A retrospective validating amendment must be applied to a pending reference, and where the statute deems the previous year's turnover to be taxed under the rates prevalent in the assessment year, the amended legal fiction governs the assessment.

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