The broad connotation of 'income' as any profit or gain actually received, and the interpretation of 'net income' as the total income minus specific payments to the government or local authority, excluding the expenses of cultivation.

1. The petitioners in O.P. No. 485 of 1962 are the appellants before us. They are the joint managing trustees of the Abdul Sathar Haji Moosa Sait Dharmasthapanam. The respondent in the O.P. and before us is the Kerala Wakf Board, a Board established under S.9 of the Wakf Act, 1954.

2. S.46 of the Act deals with the annual contribution payable to the Board. Sub-section (1) of that section reads as follows:

"The mutawalli of every wakf shall pay annually to the Board such contribution not exceeding five per cent of the net annual income of such of its property as is situate in the State as the Board may, subject to the sanction of the State Government, from time to time, determine:

Provided that no such contribution shall be payable by the mutawalli of a wakf of which the net annual income does not exceed one hundred rupees."

It is common ground that the contribution payable to the Board by the Dharmasthapanam is five per cent of its net annual income. The controversy is as regards the meaning of the expression "net annual income."

3. The Dharmasthapanam, we are told, has created no tenancies, and that it cultivates its properties directly, without the intervention of any intermediary. The question for determination is whether the "net annual income" includes the expenses of such cultivation as contended by the Board and held in the judgment under appeal.

4. According to the appellants the expenses of cultivation should be deducted, and it could not have been the intention of the Legislature to make a trust pay a higher amount by way of contribution simply because it had not leased its properties. There is no doubt that if the properties had been leased, the five per cent would have been payable only on the rent received by the Dharmasthapanam from its tenants, and that such rent would have been fixed only after deducting the expenses of cultivation that the tenants would have to incur and a fair margin of profit for those tenants.

5. A definition of the expression "net income" is available in S.3(g) of the Act. According to that definition, unless the context otherwise requires, "net income" means "the total income less any revenue, cess, rates and taxes payable to the Government or any local authority". The expression "total income" is not defined in the Act, and occurs only in the definition above-mentioned.

6. The expression "gross income" is used in S.4(3)(c) and the expression "gross annual income',' in S.25(3)(b) of the Act. Those expressions also are not defined in the Act. The word "gross" as an adjective means "without any deductions" and it is not difficult to say that it is opposed to the word "net" which normally means "clear of all charges and deductions".

7. S.3(g), however, does not refer to "gross income". It refers to "total income". We are not satisfied that the expressions are synonymous in the Act with which we are concerned.

8. Income is a word that takes, its colour from its context. According to the dictionary it means "a thing that comes in". "But such a broad literal meaning of the term", as pointed out by LaBrie, "does not satisfy even the normal requirements for day-to-day expression." (The meaning of income in the Law of Income-tax, page 21).

9. The expression "net income" occurs only in S.3(g) of the Act. The expression "net annual income" occurs in S.46(1) and 46(3), and the expression "surplus income" in S.15(2)(e). In the light of those provisions and the other provisions of the Act in which the word "income" occurs we think we shall be justified in saying that "total income" in S.3(g) of the Act is an income exclusive of the expenses of cultivation and that "net income" under that definition is the said total income minus the revenue, cess, rates and taxes payable to the Government or any local authority.

10. "Income" said Lord Wright in Kamakshya Narain Singh v. Commissioner of Income-tax (AIR. 1943 Privy Council 153), "is a word of the broadest connotation". "What, then, is the ordinary, natur