1963 (12) TMI 17

X X   X X   Extracts   X X   X X

Full Text of the Document

X X   X X   Extracts   X X   X X

....any to the customers at the termination thereof. 2.. It is common ground that if there was a sale by the customers to the company at the inception of the arrangements, there will be a resale by the company to the customers at the termination of those arrangements and that the company will be liable to pay sales tax on the resale as held by the Department. The question for determination, therefore, is whether there is a transfer of property by way of sale from the customers to the company at the inception of the arrangements between them. 3.. The arrangements are evidenced by the documents which have been marked as exhibits B1 to B9. Copies of those exhibits are appended to this judgment. 4.. There is no doubt that our duty in a cas....

X X   X X   Extracts   X X   X X

Full Text of the Document

X X   X X   Extracts   X X   X X

....xpress the nature of the contract as to the loan and the security for the loan ". The Act also provided for the registration of bills of sale (Halsbury, Third Edition, Vol. III, pages 257 and 260). 6.. A hire-purchase agreement does not come within the ambit of the Bills of Sales Act (1878) Amendment Act, 1882. A motive, therefore, exists in England to camouflage a bill of sale as a hire-purchase agreement and the courts in England have been called upon, on many occasions, to strip the verbiage and arrive at the true nature of the transaction concerned. 7.. Staffs Motor Guarantee, Limited v. British Wagon Company, Limited [1934] 2 K.B. 305. is a case where the owner of a motor lorry-Thomas Heapsold his lorry to a finance company and t....

X X   X X   Extracts   X X   X X

Full Text of the Document

X X   X X   Extracts   X X   X X

....e in which a hire-purchase agreement was treated as a bill of sale-is Polsky v. S. and A. Services [1951] 1 All E.R. 185. In that case Lord Goddard, C.J., emphasised the fact that the main object of the Act of 1882 was to protect borrowers as against lenders and that the court had to determine whether the transaction in question was a genuine sale by the original owner of the motor car to the person who was finding the money and a genuine re-letting by the latter to the original owner on hire-purchase terms, or whether the transaction, though taking that form, was nothing more than a loan of money on the security of the goods. 9.. It is not suggested that any statute in this country provides a motive to camouflage the giving of a securit....

X X   X X   Extracts   X X   X X

Full Text of the Document

X X   X X   Extracts   X X   X X

....efficacy of the hire-purchase agreement and indeed to serve as its very basis, the petitioners had to obtain title to that vehicle; and to deny the existence or the reality of the sale which the acquisition of title involved, would really be not to construe the transaction between the parties, but rather to fashion one for them." 12.. There is no doubt that the object of the arrangements is the obtaining of credit. Exhibit B1, the application makes this abundantly clear. So does the difference between the price at which the customers buy the vehicles and the price at which they immediately sell them to the company. The former is invariably higher than the latter. But this does not mean that the parties cannot, or will not, so arrange the....