TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1950 (11) TMI 1
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....d Section 4 of the Act provides that "every dealer whose gross turnover during the year immediately preceding the commencement of the Act exceeded Rs. 5,000 shall be liable to pay tax under the Act on sales effected after the date so notified." It is not disputed that, having regard to the definitions of dealer, goods and sale under the Act, the appellant, who has been doing contract work on a fairly extensive scale for the Central Public Works Department and the East Indian Railway, comes within the category of a dealer mentioned in Section 4. Section 7 of the Act provides that "no dealer shall, while being liable under Section 4 to pay tax under the Act, carry on business as a dealer unless he has been registered under the Act and possess....
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....cording to the best of his judgment, and was ordered to pay Rs. 4,526-13-0 as tax and a penalty amounting to one and a half times the amount assessed, under Section 10(5) of the Act. The appellant appealed to the Commissioner against the assessment and the penalty levied upon him, but his appeal was dismissed on the 6th June, 1946. He then filed a petition for revision to the Board of Revenue, against the order of the Commissioner, but it was dismissed on the 28th May, 1947. He thereupon moved the Board of Revenue to refer to the High Court certain questions of law arising out of its order of the 28th May, but Mr. N. Baksi, a Member of the Board, by his order of the 4th December, 1947, rejected the petition with the following observations :....
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....ter made an application to the High Court for requiring the Board of Revenue to state a case, but this application was summarily rejected. He then applied to the High Court for leave to appeal to the Federal Court, which the High Court granted, following the decision of a Full Bench of the Lahore High Court in Feroze Shah Kaka Khel v. Income-tax Commissioner, Punjab and N. W. F. P., Lahore. The High Court pointed out in the order granting leave that in the appeal that was taken to the Privy Council in the Lahore case, an objection had been raised as to the competency of the appeal, but the Privy Council, while dismissing the appeal on the merits, had made the following observations :---- " The objection is a serious one. Admittedly such an....
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....d exhaustively dealt with, and it has been pointed out that the view taken by the Full Bench of the Lahore High Court in the case cited by the appellant was not supported by several other High Courts and that the Privy Council also, when the matter came before it, refrained from expressing any opinion as to its correctness. In our opinion, the view expressed in the Patna case is correct. Clause 31 of the Letters Patent of the Patna High Court, on the strength of which the appellant resists the preliminary objection raised by the respondent, runs thus:- " And we do further ordain that any person or persons may appeal to Us, our heirs and successors, in Our or Their Privy Council, in any matter not being of criminal jurisdiction, from any f....
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....raised and send a copy of its judgment to the Board of Revenue. The Board of Revenue then has to dispose of the case in the light of the judgment of the High Court. It is true that the Board's order is based on what is stated by the High Court to be the correct legal position, but the fact remains that the order of the High Court standing by itself does not affect the rights of the parties, and the final order in the matter is the order which is passed ultimately by the Board of Revenue. This question has been fully dealt with in Tata Iron and Steel Company v. Chief Revenue Authority, Bombay, where Lord Atkinson pointed out that the order made by the High Court was merely advisory and quoted the following observations of Lord Esher in In re....