High Court held that\u00a0 assessee, was\u00a0 engaged in contract carriage of goods, lifted goods for delivery but did not deliver them, addition of value of goods short delivered in hands of assessee was justified. On appeal, allowing the appeals the Court held that for the purposes of section\u00a069A\u00a0of the Act, the deeming effect of the provision will only apply, firstly, if the assessee is the owner of the goods and secondly, for any article to be considered a \u201cvaluable article\u201d under section\u00a069A, it must be intrinsically costly, and it will not be regarded as valuable if a huge mass of a non-precious and common place article is taken into account, for imputing high value. Bitumen was not a valuable article in the context of section\u00a069A\u00a0and the assessee was not the owner of the bitumen for the purpose of section\u00a069A\u00a0of the Act. The assessee was engaged as a carrier to deliver the bitumen, after having lifted it from the oil companies, to the various Divisions of the Road Construction Department of the Government of Bihar. It was not the case of either party that the assessee had become the owner of the bitumen in question in a manner authorised by law. On the other hand, the specific case of the assessee was that the assessee never became the owner and it remained only a carrier. However, there had been short delivery, which would mean that the assessee continued in possession contrary to the terms of contract of carriage. Possession of the goods was clearly wrongful when it continued with the assessee contrary to the terms of the contract and the law. The assessee did not possess the power of alienation. The assessee could at no point of time have claimed rights over the bitumen as an owner. The possession of the assessee had its origin under a contract of bailment. The assessee was bereft of any of the rights or powers associated with ownership of property and the Assessing Officer acted illegally in holding that the assessee was the owner. \u00a0Thus, bitumenas such could not be treated as a valuable article.\u00a0 The assessee was certainly not the owner of the bitumen. Due to short delivery of goods, the possession of the assessee was unlawful. The inevitable conclusion therefore was that the assessee was not the owner, for the purposes of section\u00a069A. Articles of value are a genus of which valuable articles are a species, i. e., a subset of high priced items. To put it differently, an article having value, may not be a valuable article. To categorise all sundry items as valuable articles will be an interpretation foreign to the purpose of the law and the intention of the Legislature in so far as section\u00a069A\u00a0is concerned. Circular No. 20 of 1964 dated July 7, 1964 stated that the 1964 amendment was enacted not to subject lower middle-class people to taxation by taxing gold or jewellery inherited from forefathers, but was mandated for \u201cbig assessees\u201d who convert their black money and unaccounted wealth into gold jewellery and gold vessels and claim these to be heirlooms. The Legislature never intended that any and every article of value should be brought within the ambit of section\u00a069A. The intent of the Legislature through the amendment was to subject articles like gold, jewellery and other valuable items, to Income-tax, where such articles are typically owned with the intention of avoiding Income-tax.\u00a0 When the principle of ejusdem generis is applied, the preceding words in section\u00a069A, money, bullion, jewellery would suggest that the phrase \u201cother valuable article\u201d which follows those words, would justify inclusion of only high value goods. Any other way of reading the phrase \u201cother valuable article\u201d or \u201cvaluable article\u201d by ignoring the kind of specific goods mentioned in the preceding part of section\u00a069A, would be incorrect and would do violence to the plain language of the provision and travel beyond the legislative intent. Additionally, the maxim \u201cnoscitur a sociis\u201d (i. e., a word is known by its associates) would also support this view that the other valuable articles should be items in the nature of silver bars, or jewellery or money, i.e., only high-priced item. To include bitumen, the residual offshoot material during processing of crude oil, excluding its valuable constituents like petrol, diesel, LPG, aviation fuel, etc., within the expression \u201cother valuable article\u201d in section\u00a069A, would result in absurdities, and was to be eschewed. \u00a0The principle that a fiscal statute should be strictly construed is well settled. For purposes of interpreting section\u00a069A\u00a0of the Act the ordinary and literal meaning should be adopted as the words in the statute are clear and unambiguous.\u00a0 The phrase \u201cvaluable article\u201d would simply mean an item \u201cworth a great deal of money\u201d. It cannot include \u201cany article of value\u201d. An ordinary \u201carticle\u201d cannot be bracketed in the same category as other high-priced articles like bullion, gold, jewellery mentioned in section\u00a069A\u00a0by attributing high value to it only on the strength of its bulk quantity.(AY. 1995-96, 1996-97)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 69 : Unexplained investments-Unexplained money-Possession of goods as bailee for carriage of goods-Does not render owner of gods or deemed to be owner-Bitumen is not a valuable article in context of section 69A-Assessee was mere carrier supplying goods (Bitumen) from consignor i.e. oil marketing companies to consignee i.e. road construction department, he could not be said to be owner for purpose of section 69A of the Act-Other Valuable article-Interpretation Of Taxing Statutes-Ejusdem Generis-Noscitur A Sociis-To be construed Ejusdem Generis with money, bullion or jewellery-Additions deleted. [S. 69A,Carriage by Road Act, 2017, S 15,Contract Act, 1872, S. 148, Transfer of Property Act, 1882, S. 54, Indian Penal Code, 1860, S. 405, Sale of Goods Act, 1930, S. 27, 39, Circular No. 20 of 1964, dated 7-7-19964 instruction No. 1916 dated 11-5-1994 ] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-a6W","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38871,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38870\/revisions\/38871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}