TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2010 (1) TMI 1145
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....reinafter called "the Act", among other things, fixing the value of various varieties of imported timber for the purpose of payment of advance tax. It is seen from the judgment that around 25 parties contested the very same circular, along with the appellant, and Government Pleader informed us that to his knowledge, no other party has filed appeal against the judgment. We have heard counsel appearing for the appellant in the writ appeal and Government Pleader appearing for the respondents. At the outset we notice that the constitutional validity of section 47(16A) of the Act which authorises the Commissioner of Commercial Taxes to identify evasion prone goods and order collection of advance tax in respect of the same is upheld by judgment ....
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.... reference to the price shown in the invoice of the appellant's suppliers. On going through the judgment under appeal, most of the legal questions raised by the appellant about the Commissioner's jurisdiction stand decided by the learned single judge and we do not find any ground to deviate from the said finding. Further, when the validity of the statutory provision is upheld by this court, this necessarily means that advance tax could be collected in respect of goods notified as evasion prone goods by the Commissioner under section 47(16A) of the Act. If advance tax is to be collected, necessarily value has to be estimated because advance tax is payable before the sale of the commodity. If the Commissioner has left it open to the ....
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....ommissioner for the purpose of collection of advance tax. Even though counsel raised a valid point that flat rate of price fixed irrespective of the size of the wood, mainly its girth, is arbitrary, we are afraid if we direct the Commissioner to fix the value for the purpose of payment of advance tax based on girth or size, then higher value will be fixed for timber of large size that could be used for making broad size planks which have high value. It is common knowledge that timber brought from abroad are mostly from East Asian countries, namely, Malaysia, Myanmar, where they cut and supply large size and grown up timber from the forest which are invariably very big in size. Therefore we do not find any merit in this contention and even i....