JUDGMENT

CHINNAPPA REDDY, J.:— While I entirely agree with my brother, Ranganath Misra, J. in the judgment proposed to be delivered by him, I wish to add a few paragraphs, particularly to supplement what he has said on the "fashionable" topic of tax avoidance, My excuse for inflicting this extra opinion is that the ingenious attempts to rationalise and legitimise tax avoidance have always fascinated and amused me and made me wonder how ready the minds are to adapt themselves and discover excuses to dip into the treasury.

2. The shortest definition of tax avoidance that I have come across is "the art of dodging tax without breaking the law". Much legal sophistry and judicial exposition have gone into the attempt to differentiate the concepts of tax evasion and tax avoidance and to discover the invisible line supposed to exist which distinguishes one from the other. Tax avoidance, it seems, is legal; tax evasion is illegal.

3. Though initially the law was, and I suppose the law still is, "there is no equity about a tax. There is no presumption as to a tax. Nothing is to be read in, nothing is to be implied", During the period between the two World Wars, the theory came to be propounde