Supreme Court: In the matter where the first proviso to Rule 3(2)(c) of the Karnataka Value Added Tax Rules, 2005 was being interpreted to facilitate the determination of taxable turnover as defined in Section 2(34) of the Karnataka Value Added Tax Act, 2003 in interface with Section 30 of the Act and Rule 31 of the Rules, the Court said that the interpretation to be extended to the proviso involved has to be essentially in accord with the legislative intention to sustain realistically the benefit of trade discount as envisaged. Any exposition to probabilise exaction of the levy in excess of the due, being impermissible cannot be thus a conceivable entailment of any law on imperative impost.
The Court further said that to insist on the quantification of trade discount for deduction at the time of sale itself, by incorporating the same in the tax invoice/bill of sale, would be to demand the impossible for all practical purposes and thus would be ill-logical, irrational and absurd. Trade discount though an admitted phenomenon in commerce, the computation thereof may depend on various factors singular to the parties as well as by way of uniform norms in business not necessarily enforceable or implementable at the time of the original sale. To deny the benefit of deduction only on the ground of omission to reflect the trade discount though actually granted in future, in the tax invoice/bill of sale at the time of the original transaction would be to ignore the contemporaneous actuality and be unrealistic, unfair, unjust and deprivatory. While, devious manipulations in trade discount to avoid tax in a given fact situation is not an impossibility, such avoidance can be effectively prevented by insisting on the proof of such discount, if granted.
The bench of Dipak Misra and Amitava Roy, JJ said that the requirement of reference of the discount in the tax invoice or bill of sale to qualify it for deduction has to be construed in relation to the transaction resulting in the final sale/purchase price and not limited to them original sale sans the trade discount. However, the transactions allowing discount have to be proved on the basis of contemporaneous records and the final sale price after deducting the trade discount must mandatorily be reflected in the accounts as stipulated under Rule 3(2)(c) of the Rules. The sale/purchase price has to be adjudged on a combined consideration of the tax invoice or bill of sale as the case may be along with the accounts reflecting the trade discount and the actual price paid. The first proviso has thus to be so read down, as above, to be in consonance with the true intendment of the legislature and to achieve as well the avowed objective of correct determination of the taxable turnover. [Southern Motors v. State of Karnataka, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 42, decided on 18.01.2017]
