TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1992 (4) TMI 221
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....nce this appeal. The appellant sold ten REP licences during the period relevant to the assessment year 1985-86. On 17th March, 1990, it was served with a notice under section 12-A of the said Act. The notice stated that the appellant's assessment for the relevant assessment year had been completed. It had thereafter been found that it had sold the said REP licences. The Commissioner of Commercial Taxes, by his circular dated 30th January, 1990, had clarified that import licences and other similar licences were "goods exigible to tax" under the said Act. Accordingly, the said notice was issued to make taxable the sale price of the said REP licences, in the sum of Rs. 25,97,458.40. The circular referred to in the said notice stated thus....
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....C 165 (SC). Policies, freely transferable and the transferee was entitled to import the goods permitted to be imported thereby upon production before the customs authority of only a document evidencing the transfer of the REP licence in his name. Since an REP licence commanded a premium, the sales tax authorities wanted, unjustifiably, to include that premium in the sales turnover of the appellant so far as the said REP licences sold during the assessment years under reference were concerned. Our attention was invited to the judgment of the Supreme Court in Swami Motor Transports (P) Ltd. v. Sri Sankaraswamigal Mutt AIR 1963 SC 864. The Supreme Court considered the provisions of the Madras Act 19 of 1955, which amended the Madr....
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.... (SC); AIR 1986 SC 63. What was there in question was whether sales tax could be levied by a State Legislature on the sale of lottery tickets within the concerned State. In order to decide this question, the true concepts of goods, sale, movable and immovable property were relevant. The Supreme Court noted that section 2(7) of the Sale of Goods Act defined "goods" as meaning every kind of movable property other than actionable claims. The expression "Movable property" occurring therein had to mean property of every description except immovable property. Since goods were defined to exclude actionable claims, the definition of "actionable claim" in section 3 of the Transfer of Property Act was noted. It runs thus: "'Actionable cl....
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.... right to apply for the purchase of land was not a right to property. This was a case which dealt with rights under a statute which created merely obligations or rights in personam and not with an agreement in the nature of a grant. In the case of the latter type of agreements, i.e., agreements in the nature of grant, the rights or benefits arising thereunder were property, more so when a party thereto had become entitled to the same on performing his part of the contract and in fact such rights or benefits would also be assignable. The Supreme Court noted the arguments on behalf of the lottery dealers that the concept of lottery could be sub-divided into two parts, namely, a right to participate and a right to receive the prize but the two....
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....ent of an actionable claim." (Emphasis* supplied) The Supreme Court also noted that incorporeal rights like copyrights or an intangible thing like electric energy could be regarded as goods exigible to sales tax. The Supreme Court, therefore, found no reason why the entitlement to a right to participate in a draw, which was a beneficial interest in movable property of incorporeal or intangible character, should not be regarded as "goods" for the purpose of levying sales tax. The conclusion was that lottery tickets to the extent that they comprised the entitlement to participate in the draw were "goods" properly so called, squarely falling within the definition of that expression as given in the Tamil Nadu Act, 1959, and the Bengal....