1973 PLP 221 (PTD)

Date of hearing: 15th February 1973. TUFAIL ALI A. RAHMAN, C. J.‑The material facts involved in the present petition are entirely undisputed and the result of this petition must depend upon two fairly short questions of law which themselves concern only the meaning of two expressions used in certain notifications exempting the goods there mentioned from sales tax.

2. The petitioners are a private limited company and among its other businesses it is engaged in are the manufacture and sale either in the trade or to private customers of matresses. Under the Sales Tax Act all goods produced or manufactured in Pakistan are subject to a sales tax and this tax is payable by the manufacturer or producer. Under section 7 of that Act the Central Government may, by notification in the official Gazette exempt any goods or class of goods from such tax. There is not and cannot be any dispute that matresses are goods which are manufactured and, in relation to those manufactured by the petitioners, it is also of course admitted that they are manu?factured within Pakistan. Clearly therefore, unless there be any exemption in favour of matresses the petitioners would be liable to pay the sales tax. There was no exemption in respect of matresses or any other class of goods which could concievably cover matresses until the 26th of June 1964, when by notification No. S.R.O. 5‑7/R/64 "furniture" was exempted from the levy of sales tax with effect from 1st of July 1964. By another notifica?tion No. S.R.0.5‑7(K)/66, dated 12‑5‑1966, however, the word "furniture" was pre‑fixed by the word "wooden" and this notification, superseding the earlier one came into effect from 1‑7‑1966. The net effect, therefore, is that as from 1‑7‑1964 up to 1‑7‑1966 furniture was exempted from sales tax and from the latter date onwards only wooden furniture is exempt. The two questions, therefore, that arise in this case are whether matresses are included in the word "furniture" and, if so, whether they are also included in the expression "wooden furniture". If the answer to the first question be in the affirmative then for the two fears, that is, 1‑7‑1964 to 1‑7‑1966 the petitioners are not liable to pay tax on the matresses and, if the second question be also answered fn the affirmative, then even after 1‑7‑1966 they are not so liable. Although various minor points ware debated at the bar before us it seems to us and it was agreed by learned counsel on both sides that a decision on these two questions finally concludes the controversy in this case and that any of the other subsidiary points raised will have no bearing on the matter.

3. The word `furniture' is neither defined in the Sales Tax Act nor in the notifications to which I gave referred. It is a word commonly used In ordinary language and ought, therefore, I think, be understood, in the absence of an applicable definition statutorily laid down, in its ordinary meaning; as stated in Maxwell on The Interpretation of Statutes, Twelfth Edition, page 28:‑ "The first and most elementary rule of construction is that it is to be assumed that the words and phrases of technical legislation are used in their technical meaning if they have acquired one, and otherwise in their ordinary meaning, and the second is that the phrases and sentences are to be construed according to the rules of grammar." Subject to one argument of learned counsel for the respondents which I should notice in its proper context, it is nobody's case that the word has acquired any technical meaning. The Oxford Dictionary gives a very large number of meanings to the word. In its very large sense it includes even the harness, and trappings of a horse, items of personal clothings, apparatus, implements and tools. Words, however, in their ordinary usage? even, bear very many different senses and I do not think that all these wider meanings which generally stem from the idea of anything which is used in the furnishing, would be applicable in the present case; the word 'furnishing' itself that I have used in the earlier part of this sentence is in this context used in the very large sense of supplying for use. Among the different meanings, therefore, given in this dictionary I think the relevant meaning is "Movable articles, whether useful or ornamental, in a dwelling house, place of business or public building". It is worthy of or note that the editors of this dictionary pre‑fixed this meaning by use of the words in parenthesis "the prevailing sense". The Chambers Dictionary gives a set of more simply stated definitions, the relevant of which is "movables, either for use or ornament with which a house is equipped." The expression is also noticed in Stroud's Judicial Dictionary (Vol. 2), page 1198 and here again it is held to include a large variety of things, a common feature of which it would seem to me, is that the articles in question should be movable, meant for the use or decoration of a dwelling house or office premises and might also include movable effects in such premises; particularly the word 9s held to mean the same thing as "household furniture" which expression in turn is at page 1347 of the same volume, stated to be descriptive of such personal chattels which contribute to the use or convenience of the house‑holder or the ornament of the house. In the various cases which Stroud quotes under the two headings even such items as crockery and plates, electrical appliances if movable, clocks, wireless sets etc. are held included. It Is to be noted that all the cases that Stroud quotes were cases which were concerned either with the interpretation of the word in wills where the question of what was included in a bequest was involved or as occurring in legislation for the control of house rents. Even, therefore, in its more limited sense, that is, the sense which I have quoted from the Oxford Dictionary as the relevant sense the expression seems to be wide enough to cover movable goods in a house. Nevertheless I am willing in favour of the respon?dents to construe it even more narrowly and to define it in the way in which I think a common person conversant with the correct use of the English language would normally understand the term vie. such movable items as are ordinarily kept in the house and which are intended to supply the living needs of its occupants or to contribute to the comfort of their, living.

4. In this sense learned counsel for the respondent contended that a matress is not an item of furniture at all and is at best merely a component of such an item, that is to say, of a bed. It was his contention that a cushion or a pillow for example would not be by itself regarded as an item of furniture but merely as a component of the furniture, vie. in those cases a chair or al sofa and a bed. I am not at all sure that, even if this be so, a matress would not still be an item of furniture inasmuch as it would still be a movable item of goods ordinarily to be found in a house and used for the purpose for which I have stated. Assuming without holding, however, that the true definition of an item of furniture in that context would be that if a particular item is never used by itself but only as part of another item which has a distinct entity it would not be furniture, I still think that a matress would be included in the word "furniture". It is possible that in the European countries where people do not ordinarily sleep upon the floor a matress would not be regarded as independent item of furniture but only as a component of a bed. I think, however, that in construing an Act passed by our own Legislature I am entitled to, and in fact should, have regard to the conditions and habits of our own people. Even though today a fairly large section of the richer classes have adopted this Western style of furniture, sleeping on the floor among the other classes and even among the richer classes is still by no means uncommon. A poor man could well spread a straw mat upon the floor of his house, cover it with a thin matress and sleep on it. Even very many well‑to‑do people still prefer to sleep not upon a bed but upon a matress spread on the floor. I would, therefore, hold that upon the most narrow construc?tion of the word "furniture" a matress is in itself a bed and therefore an item of furniture even though it can be and often is used as part of a larger item of a furniture, namely, bedstead.

5. Learned counsel for the respondents has referred us to the decision of the Supreme Court in Usmania Glass Sheet Factory, Chittagong v. .Sales Tax Officer, Chittagong (P L D 1971 S C 205), which also was a cage of interpreting an item of exemption under the Sale Tax Act, the item in question being, "concrete building components" and retied particularly upon the observations of Mr. Justice Waheeduddin Ahmad who delivered the judgment of the Court at page 210: "According to Craies on Statute Law, for the construction of ordinary and technical terms and expressions, there are two rules according to which such terms and expressions are to be construed when used in an Act of Parliament. The first rule is that general statutes will prima facie be presumed to use words in their popular sense. The second rule is that if the statute is one passed with reference to a particular trade, business or transaction and words are used therein which every body conversant with that trade, business or transaction knows and understands to have a particular meaning in it, then the words are to be construed as having that particular meaning which may differ from the ordinary or popular meaning." Learned counsel argues on the basis of these observations, which of course are binding on us, that the word "matress" has been used in reference to a particular trade and that, therefore, should be understood in the sense in which people in that trade would understand it. The next step in his argument is that because ordinarily shops dealing with furniture would not be selling matresses, therefore it should be assumed that matresses are not understood in the trade as being part of furniture. I regret I am not able to accept any of the steps in this argument. In the first place the statute we are dealing with, namely, the Sales Tax Act is not one "passed with reference to a particular trade, business or transaction"; as I have already shown it covers all manufactured goods and even produced goods. But even if I were to accept the contention that the statute was passed with reference to a particular trade it does not, therefore, follow that merely because persons who deal in that trade would not ordinarily sell a particular item that item Is, therefore, outside the meaning of the term which is being construed as understood in that trade. To give one example out of many that occur to me there are currently being sold in Karachi, and in fact in great vogue to household furnishing, stools made out of a wooden frame with stuffing and entirely covered by either leather or rexine; yet no shop which purports to deal with furniture sells these items and they are to be obtained either at the shops selling manufactured leather items or from such shops as deal with curios and village handicraft work which include such very separate items as silver jewellery, carved wooden boxes and carpets.

6. It might well be and I say this with respect that the language in which his Lordship couched his observations was influenced by the particular Item that was being considered. This as I have noticed before was "concrete building com?ponents". Now such things would ordinarily be purchased not by the house‑holder who is having his house built but the contractor who is building it for him. Both the seller and the customer, therefore, would be using the term in the meaning used by them in their own trade. Matresses ordinarily, however, would be purchased not only by furniture‑makers in order to incorporate them into beds but even by a private consumer who may wish to use it in a bed which he already owns. The idea, therefore, that the word is being used in the sense in which it is likely to be understood by those who buy and sell it would in the case of matresses be materially different from that in the case of concrete building components. In any case I am unable to agree with Mr. Nusrat that the test which he wishes us to accept as conclusive, namely, whether the item is ordinarily sold by furniture shops Is the correct test.

7. Having, therefore, interpreted the word `furniture' in the narrowest sense that I can possibly accept I think I must hold that matresses are included in the word "furniture".

8. The next question then arises is whether the matresses manufactured by the petitioners are also "wooden furniture". Now the petitioners do not say what proportion of wood is used in the matress. Undoubtedly it is not wholly made of wood. The statute nowhere says what proportion of wood must be used in an item of furniture so as to make it qualify as wooden furniture. The contention of Mr. Pesh Imam, learned counsel for the petitioner, is that :o long as some wood is used, however small, an item must be regarded as wooden furniture. I regret my entire inability to accept this contention. There are very few items of furniture indeed which are wholly made of one substance and I think the true test must be what is the substance of which the item is substantially made. Take the case of a wooden chair; it would probably have a few nails made of iron to keep it together but this very small use of iron would not make the chair an iron chair; in ordinary parlance one would yet call it a wooden chair. Even if its cushion were made of foam rubber for instance I think one would still continue to call it wooden furniture. The contention of Mr. Pesh Imam in this connection that in the various other statutes the Legislature has been careful to define what percentage of a given substance is sufficient to classify the whole item as being made of that substance, and that this suffices it to show that in the present case, no such proportion having been fixed, the smallest quantity would suffice is not, in my opinion, correct. I do not, therefore, refer to such statutes as he has quoted for this purpose as for the Central Excise Act, Notifications which define am as being yarn which contains as certain specific percentage of cotton. Apart from the fact that, as I have already held, it is the ordinary meaning which is applicable Mr. Pesh Imam's contention might well have very contradictory results.? How would a piece of furniture which used different substances Taf, be classified? Indeed even in the case of matresses itself apart from wood, of which we understand only a very small part is used in matresses canvas, iron springs, buttons possibly made of plastic, nails and possibly other items are used. If the true test then be that a matress to be called a wooden furniture must be substantially made of wood then there is no evidence before us that the matresses manufactured by the petitioner are sub?stantially made of wood. Indeed learned counsel while arguing did not even attempt to say that they were so made and common experience shows that matresses neither are nor can have, as their principal component, wood. I am, therefore, of the opinion that the matresses in question are not wooden furniture.

9. In the result I would, therefore, grant a declaration that the petitioners were exempt from payment of Sales Tax on matresses for the period 1.7‑1964 to 1‑7‑1966 but not thereafter. It does seem that until the year 1969 the authorities were not recovering sales tax from the petitioners and the petitioners, therefore, ask for further relief that the cheques that they have paid on this account should not be realised and that the respondents be restrained from encashing them. In view of the finding which I have reached I do not think we can issue such an order and I would direct instead that all sums of money realised by the respondents be adjusted towards the liability of the petitioner on the basis that I have found and if there has been excess payment then the same be returned to the petitioners.

10. In view of the fact that upon the two major questions involved in this case each party has succeeded on one I would not make any order as to costs. FAKHRUDDIN G. EBRAHIM, J.‑--I agree. Order accordingly.