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TMI Blog1933 (3) TMI 20X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... igh Court at Calcutta. The suit was compromised and a decree was by consent pronounced directing the appellant to make a monthly payment of Rs. 1,100 to his step-mother, which he has since regularly done. It is unfortunate that the decree has not been made available to their Lordships. The Chief Justice (Rankin), however, in the judgment now under review states that "it was not disputed that the lady's maintenance was a legal liability of the Raja (the appellant) arising by reason of the fact that the Raja is in possession of his ancestral estate, that it is payable out of such estate and that this Court had declared that the maintenance was a charge thereon in the hands of the Raja". In computing the income of the appellant for the year 1 ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... f a Hindu undivided family of which the appellant was manager. Incidentally their Lordships note that a Hindu undivided family is included under the definition of "person" in s. 2(9) and is unit of assessment under s. 3, while under s. 14(1) no tax is payable by an assessee in respect of any sum which he receives as a member of a Hindu undivided family. On the same date, viz., the 24th March, 1926, the respondent issued another order reviewing the appellant's assessment, striking out the deduction of Rs. 9,900 which he had been allowed and directing an amended assessment to be made on the appellant. The ground of the order was that the payments to the stepmother were "the maintenance expenses of a member" of the Hindu undivided family of w ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... nd states that the position is the same as if the appellant "had received his various properties, securities and businesses under a bequest from his father upon the terms that these assets were charged with an annuity for the maintenance of the widow". The case was not one of "a charge created by the Raja for the payment of debts which he has voluntarily incurred". Their Lordships agree that this is the correct approach to the question. The Learned Chief Justice next examines the various exemptions and allowances conceded in ss. 7-12 of the Act in respect of the several heads of income, profits and gains chargeable to tax under s. 6 and reaches the conclusion that the appellant's liability to his step-mother does not fall within any of the ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... eal income of an owner of incumbered property, or of property charged, say, with an annuity under a will, is the annual income of the property less the interest on the incumbrance or the annuity, and the mortgagee or annuitant and the owner of the property are in a sense, entitled between them to the income". Their Lordships agree with the learned Chief Justice that this passage, which he finds inapplicable, must be read in relation to the subject-matter with which Lord Davey is dealing and they would further add, as they have had occasion to do more than once of late, that the invocation of the Imperial Income Tax Code and of decisions pronounced upon it is apt to be very misleading in the interpretation of Indian Income-tax legislation w ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ct of any such provision points rather to an intention to tax, in Lord Davey's phrase, only "the real income" of the tax-payer, than to an intention to impose, without right of reimbursement, a tax on what is a charge upon his income. As to whether the appellant's step-mother is liable under the Act to assessment in respect of the payments received by her, their Lordships, like the Judges in the court below, deem it inadvisable to say anything. Being of opinion that the Rs. 9,900 in question were not income of the appellant within the statutory meaning, their Lordships will humbly advise his Majesty that the appeal be allowed, that the judgment of the High Court of the 12th August, 1929, be reversed except in so far as at it finds the app ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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