TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1964 (11) TMI 105
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....document is a sale-deed for a consideration of Rs. 1,00,000 as contended by the executants. (2) Whether in view of the provisions of Section 24 of the Stamp Act, the sale consideration shall be deemed to be Rs. 5,55,000 and duty liable to be paid thereon as held by the Board. (3) Whether the consideration of the sale will be deemed to be Rs. Ten Lakhs, i.e., the entire amount due to the mortgagee Bank, and duty is payable thereon. (4) On what amount is the additional stamp duty under section 107 of the Kanpur Development Act, 1945, leviable. The High Court gave the following answer to the first three questions : "The document in question is a sale deed for a consideration of Rs. 1,00,000 only and that the Stamp duty payable i....
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.... right,% in the plots. Out of this Rs. 66,000 was payable to Messrs Shyam Sunder Gupta and Satya Parkash Gupta in respect of their share in the Kanpur Ice and Cold Storage Factory, and the remainder to the vendors. The Chartered Bank agreed to release from its charge the properties to be conveyed to the vendees provided a sum of Rs. 5,00,000 was paid to it. The vendees agreed to pay the said Bank a sum of Rs. 4,89,000, while the vendors agreed to pay Rs. 1 1,000 to the Ban& to make up the balance. In pursuance of this agreement, the vendors handed over the possession of plant and machinery of the two factories to the vendees, who paid before December 15, 1952, Rs. 3,89,000 to the said Bank. On December 15, 1952, the sale-deed in respe....
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....shall be deemed to be part of the consideration for the sale; Provided that, where property subject to a mortgage is transferred to the mortgagee, he shall be entitled to deduct from the duty payable on the transfer the amount of any duty already paid in respect of the mortgage." The charging article is Art. 23, which is as follows : "Conveyance [as defined by section 2 (10) ], not being a transfer charged or exempted under No. 62,- Where the amount or value of the consideration for such conveyance as set forth therein does not exceed Rs. 50; Where it exceeds Rs. 50 but does not exceed Rs. 1 00 The section has a history and it is set out in the judgment of Rankin, C.J., in U.K. Janardhana Rao v. Secretary of State((1931) I....
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....together frustrated and defeated. A proprietor has an estate worth pound 20,000. There is a bond upon it for Rs. 10,000. He sells that estate, and the purchaser pays to him the difference between the amount of the bond and the value of the estate, so that the bond being for pound 10,000 he pays pound 10,000. The day after he obtains inferment he pays off the bond. Well, the practical result of that is that he has paid pound 20,000 as the purchase money of this estate, and he has obtained a conveyance with an ad valorem stamp of the value of pound 10,000. That is a simple defeating of the purpose and intention of the Legislature as expressed in this clause, and therefore, I think, upon the plain meaning of this section, that there was ....
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....oner Central Division((1925) I.L.R. 49 Bom. 73.) that the phrase "subject to a mortgage or other encumbrance" in the explanation to s. 24 qualifies the word 'sale' and not the word 'property'. We need hardly say that the Stamp Act is a taxing statute and must be construed strictly, and if two meanings are equally possible, the meaning in favour of the subject must be given effect to. Before we consider the facts of this case, we may mention that it is plain from the explanation that it is only the unpaid mortgage money that is deemed to be part of the consideration. If the mortgage money has been paid off by the date of the conveyance the explanation does not require it to be added to the consideration. If the mortgage money has been pai....