1962 (2) TMI 6 - SUPREME COURT

Whether, the assessee's assessable profit on the sale of shares is the difference between the sale price and the cost price, or the difference between the sale price and the market price prevailing on April 1 1945 ?

Held that:- The approach of the High Court was correct and normally the commercial profits out of the transaction of sale of an article must be the difference between what the article cost the business and what it fetched on sale. So far as the business or trading activity was concerned, the market value of the shares as on April 1, 1945, was what it cost the business. We do not think that there is any question of a notional sale here. The High Court did not create any legal fiction of a sale when it took the market value as on April 1, 1945, as the proper figure for determining the actual profits made by the assessee. That the assessee later sold the shares in pursuance of a trading activity was not in dispute ; that sale was an actual sale and not a notional sale ; that actual sale resulted in some profits. To adopt the language of Lord Radcliffe, the only fair measure of assessing trading profits in such circumstances is to take the market value at one end and the actual sale proceeds at the other, the difference between the two being the profit or loss as the case may be. In a trading or commercial sense this seems to us to accord more with reality than with fiction. The answer given by the High Court to the question of law referred to it was correct. Appeal dismissed.