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2015 (9) TMI 1087 - KERALA HIGH COURTApplicable rate of VAT on "Margarine" - 4% or 12.5% - Classification of Margarine - Kerala Value Added Tax Act, 2003 - Held that:- all the subjects of enumeration should constitute a class or category and that there should be no indication of a different legislative intent. In the present instance, however, it is very clear that HSN Code Nos. 1516 and 1517 have their own distinctive enumerations. As it could be seen from the above ratio, the principle of ejusdem generis can be applied to a particular class or category, but not across the classes or categories. No interpretation, however appealing it is, can be permitted by doing violence to the plain language of the statute. The aids of interpretation are meant to steer clear of statutory ambiguities, but not to create one in the place of none. Margarine is shown with HSN Code No. 1517 and it has not even remote mention in HSN Code No. 1516. Just because supposedly similar products are listed in 1516, we cannot deracinate and transport Margarine from 1517 to 1516. At best the controversy could be confined to one aspect: With the exclusion of 'Liquid Margarine', can we presume that margarine, sans liquid margarine includes every other category, or is there anything left so that it can be classified along with other analogous products, going by their technical analysis of its constituent elements? Hon'ble Supreme Court has already disapproved the technical analysis of products to extricate them from the tax net. Further, it is, again, a well established cannon of statutory interpretation that if a genus comprises many species and only one or a few of the species have been excluded for a particular purpose, the inexorable indication of such an arrangement is that all the rest of species have been included under the genus. Moving from abstract to the concrete, we can say Margarine is a generic produce having sub-classifications, among which Liquid Margarine stands excluded. Essentially what follows is that the rest of varieties are included or at least have not been separately dealt with. Classifiable with HSN Code No. 1517 - liable to be tax @12.5% - Decided against the assessee.
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