TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1960 (11) TMI 108
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....provision authorising the levy of tax at 4½ pies in the rupee was unconstitutional and Since reported as Krishna Iyer and Another v. State of Madras [1956] 7 S.T.C. 346. unenforceable and held that the tax should be assessed only at 3 pies per rupee. That decision of the Tribunal was rendered on 28th May, 1956. The excess amount of Rs. 936-1-2 that had been collected from the petitioner was refunded to him by adjustment on 30th September, 1956. The Madras General Sales Tax (Third Amendment) Act (XV of 1956), to which we shall refer hereafter as the Amending Act, received the assent of the President on 1st October, 1956, and was published in the Gazette on 8th October, 1956. Section 17 of the Amending Act validated assessments under t....
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....peal. The petitioner applied to this Court under section 12-B of the Act to revise the order of the Tribunal. The view taken by the Tribunal was erroneous. Section 17 of the Amending Act XV of 1956 could not validate the order of the Deputy Commercial Tax Officer dated 7th February, 1957. The finality of the original assessment for 1953-54 was under the order of the Tribunal dated 28th May, 1956, and that order directed assessment to tax not at the rate of 4½ pies but at the rate of 3 pies per rupee. Section 17 of the Amending Act did not operate to set aside that order of the Tribunal or to revise the original assessment which the Tribunal had modified. The statutory finality of the assessment which flowed from the order of the T....
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....ment for 1953-54. The effect of section 3 of the Amending Act XV of 1956 read with section 1(2) thereof was that the amended proviso to section 3(1) of the Act authorising a levy at 4½ pies per rupee was the statutory provision in force in the year of assessment 1953-54. That provision should be deemed to have been in force from Ist August, 1949. But the Amending Act did not provide the machinery for giving effect to that amendment to the proviso to section 3(1). The machinery to give effect to the amendment had to be sought only in the provisions of the Act of 1939 and the rules thereunder. The question is whether rule 17(3) vested a jurisdiction in the Deputy Commercial Tax Officer to revise the original assessment which, as we ....
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....frac12; pies in the rupee. Thus the original assessment was at too low a rate within the meaning of rule 17(3). No doubt rule 17(3) clothes the assessing authority with jurisdiction to revise the assessment if for any reason the original assessment was at too low a rate. The words "if for any reason" appear very wide. The question is, are they wide enough to enable the assessing authority to revise not his assessment but an assessment made final by an order of a higher authority, in this case the Tribunal. If we examine the scheme that appears to underlie sub-rules (1), (1-A), (3) and (3-A) of rule 17-it should be remembered that sub-rule (3-A) takes in both sub-rules (1) and (3)-it seems clear to us that rule 17(3) does not authorise....
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....ee A under rule 17(3). Similarly, if the lawful rate applicable to the turnover is decided in the case of A by the High Court, and in a subsequent case with reference to another assessee B the view of the High Court is overruled by the Supreme Court, can the assessing authority revise the assessment of assessee A, disturbing under rule 17(3) the finality that had attached to the assessment of A under the order of the High Court. In such cases it should be remembered the Tribunal and the Courts only declare what the law has always been. The amendment of the law by the Legislature with retrospective effect can make no difference in principle. Legislation by recourse to a statutory fiction says that that was the law in the relevant period, tho....