A Bench of Justices Najmi Waziri and Sudhir Kumar Jain was hearing an appeal against the decision of single-judge holding the same in January 2015.
After reading the taxation statute, the Bench underlined that services of advocates did not amount to “commercial activity” and they cannot be subjected to such tax.
“The rule of strict interpretation of taxation statute has to be applied. There is no scope of reading any derivative meaning or of reading any intent of the statute. Insofar as the statute has not included ‘professional activity’ of lawyers as ‘commercial activity’ the former cannot be put to tax,” the order, made available recently, stated.
Source: Barandbench
