Is biscuit food? Is coconut vegetable? These are all vexed issues in a fiscal statute since food and vegetables are exempted.
In a taxing statute for Customs, excise, income-tax or sales tax, it is of utmost importance to define goods in a proper manner. There are various definitions, which have clouded the conception about what exactly it means when a tax officer calls something synthetic rubber or aromatic chemical. They are not the same thing as what a student of science or an academician would understand them to be.
There are three definitions for the purpose of fiscal statutes: statutory definition, definition in market parlance and a scientific definition.
Here we shall see that the judicial pronouncements have very clearly propounded the rule of interpretation that for articles of daily use and commonly traded, mentioned in taxing statutes, we have to follow the definition as given in the statute, even when it is artificial. If there is no such definition in the statute, then we have to follow the understanding in the market parlance or common man
