TMI Blog1962 (4) TMI 75X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... 60, assessed the canteen provisionally on a turnover of Rs. 2,00,000, the tax levied being payable in 12 monthly instalments of Rs. 333 each. On the basis of the provisional assessment a demand in Form B was made upon the canteen for payment of the monthly tax. One of the petitions is to quash the provisional assessment and the other is for a mandamus forbidding the respondent from enforcing the demand. The petitioner, who is the Chairman of the Committee of Management, Integral Coach Factory Canteen, Madras, seeks the reliefs on the main ground that the canteen by supplying food and drink to the workers of the Integral Coach Factory is only discharging a statutory obligation and it is not a dealer carrying on the business of selling goods. ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ent may, by special or general directions, prescribe the proportion of the cost of running a canteen which shall be borne by the occupier. Pursuant to these rules, the Integral Coach Factory at Madras was obliged statutorily to open a canteen. The main features of these rules are that the service of food and beverage to workers at the canteen should be on a non-profit basis and the prices charged shall be subject to the approval of the canteen managing committee and that part of the cost of running a canteen fixed by the State Government should be paid by the occupier which is in this case the factory. In other words, there is, by virtue of the statutory rules, a complete absence of profit motive in the service by the canteen to its workers ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... f course of a wide import and almost everything perhaps may be brought within its scope, in some sense or other. But that, as it seems to me, is not the intention of the Madras General Sales Tax Act, 1959. "Business" for the purpose of section 2(g) and section 2(n) should be understood in a commercial sense with a view to make profit. If those elements are absent, I think the definition of "dealer" and "sales" in the Act will not be satisfied. In my opinion, where a person is statutorily obliged to run a canteen on an entirely non-profit basis he is obviously not a dealer and the sales effected by him to his workmen pursuant to his statutory obligation are not sales under section 2(n). Sree Meenakshi Mills Ltd. v. State of Madras[1954] 5 ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... , but the argument does not help him the entire way to succeed, Though under the present section 2(d) actual accrual of profit from trade or commerce is not essential it does not eliminate the requisite of a profit motive to call an activity a "business" for the purpose of the Madras General Sales Tax Act, 1959. Even in the earlier Act, in order to constitute a person a dealer it was not necessary that he should run a business making profit and it would be sufficient if the business was run with a profit motive. That still continues to be the position even now. My attention has been invited to Madras Electricity Department Canteen v. State of Madras[1962] 13 S.T.C. 288; 75 L.W. 189., but it does not appear that the Electricity Board there w ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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