TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1961 (12) TMI 76
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....e year 1951 or during the year 1952 this partnership was dissolved. The question as to from what date the partnership must be deemed to have been dissolved is involved in a second appeal which is pending in this Court. But in the view that we take in this case, the date of dissolution becomes really immaterial. In respect of the assessment year 1950-51 under the provisions of section 11 of the Bombay Sales Tax Act, the turnover of this firm was assessed to sales tax. The assessment was made on 20th November, 1954. It is thus obvious whether the dissolution of the firm took place in 1951 as alleged by the petitioners in this case or whether it took place in the year 1952 as alleged by Gomadi, the assessment was made at a time when the fir....
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....irm itself should have challenged the correctness of the assessment which was made upon the firm under the provisions of the Act which they did not admittedly do. The result, therefore, is that the assessment made upon the firm became final and conclusive, making it impossible for any member of that firm to contend that the assessment should have been made only upon Gomadi and not upon the firm. It is no doubt true that section 18(1) of the Act provides that if a business is transferred by a dealer to another person, the sales tax payable under the Act by that dealer in respect of his turnover is payable by the transferee of the business. Now, in this case it is impossible for the petitioners to contend that there was any transfer of the....
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....ot supersede section 5, but is only supplementary to it. That being so, all that section 18(1) does is to make the transferee also liable for payment of the sales tax in addition to the transferor-dealer. It does not substitute the liability of the transferee for that of the dealer. The liability is an additional liability imposed upon the transferee, preserving the liability of the dealer which section 5 brings into existence. In my opinion, the fact that there was a dissolution of the partnership business, as contended by the petitioners before us, did not attract the provisions of section 18(1) so as to make Gomadi exclusively liable for payment of the sales tax due by the firm. It was, however, next urged by Mr. Jahagirdar that since in....
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....although for the purposes of the Hindu law that collection of persons is a Hindu joint family with peculiar legal incidents, those incidents for the purposes of the Sales Tax Act can have little relevance, and that if persons of whom a Hindu joint family is composed compendiously constitute a dealer for the purpose of the Sales Tax Act, the members of that family are no more than a group or collection of adventurers in trade conveniently calling themselves by a trade name, and if those persons effected a partition as between themselves, to say that that group which really *Since reported as K.S. Subbarayappa and Sons v. Commercial Tax Officer, Kolar Circle, Kolar [1962] 13 S.T.C. 571. was the dealer ceases to exist by such partition would b....