Issuance of requisition held violative of the Act.

M.N. Chandurkar, C.J.

1. All these appeals arise out of a common order delivered by Mohan, 3, in a batch of writ petitions in which the learned Judge held that the appellants' challenge to the levy of profession tax by the Madras City Municipal Corporation as well as by the Madurai and Coimbatore Municipal Corporations and other District Municipalities was futile, since the levy did not suffer from any infirmity.

2. The batch of appeals with which we are now dealing relate only to the levy of profession tax of the Madras City Municipal Corporation hereinafter referred to as the Corporation. The Assistant Revenue Officer of the Corporation of Madras issued a requisition under Section 115-A of the Madras City Municipal (Corporation) Act, 1919, requiring certain public authorities to recover profession tax for the second half-year of the financial year 1985-86 from the salaries/wages of all persons employed for not less than 60 days during the period 1st April to 30th September/1st October to 31st March and all persons whose half yearly income exceeds Rs. 1,800/-, at the rates furnished therein, For the purpose of convenience, we shall deal only with the facts in W.A. No. 37 of 1986, which arose out of W.P. No. 10083 of 1985 which was filed by the Tamil Nadu Government Officials Union, represented by its President. The respondents to this writ petition, were the Chief Secretary to the -Government of Tamil Nadu, Madras City Municipal Corporation and the different Pay and Accounts Officers in the City of Madras as well as the Director Treasuries and Accounts, Nandanam, Madras. Similar writ petitions were also filed by the Employees' Associations of several employees of public Corporations, Banks and the Postal Department. It is not in dispute that when such requisition was sent by the Corporation of Madras to several employers, an amount in the nature of profession tax was deducted out of the salary of persons whose half yearly income was more than Rs. 1,800/-. When such deductions were being made, several writ petitions came to be filed in this Court challenging these deductions substantially on two grounds: The first ground was that the persons from out, of whose salaries these deductions were being made, were persons in public employment, either employees of the State Government or the Central Government or Public Corporations and that the Corporation was not entitled to recover any amount by way of tax on profession from such persons, since such a tax would become a tax on employment. The case was that the Corporation could recover only profession tax. An employment, much Jess public employment, did not amount to practising a profession. The second ground was that assuming that there is a power in the Corporation to levy a tax on persons who are employed in public employment, the profession tax has not been assessed in accordance with the provisions of the Madras City Municipal (Corporation) Act, 1919 hereinafter referred to as the Act, inasmuch as the provisions in Schedule IV which provides for assessment to profession tax has not been complied with.

3. The case of the Corporation before the learned single Judge was that a tax on employment was really in the nature of a tax on profession and secondly in view of the provisions of Section 115-A of the Act, which are introduced by Tamil Nadu Act 23 of 1976, the Corporation could straightaway proceed to take recourse to Section 115-A of the Act. The positive case of the Corporation in the return is that in so far as persons in public employment are concerned, it is not necessary for the Corporation to make individual assessment of tax after obtaining the particulars from the employers and Heads of Offices to enable them to deduct the profession tax from the salaries or wages of their employees and pay it to the Corporation. The further case of the Corporation' is as under :

Rule 8 and other rules, found under Schedule IV of the Act, which were framed long before the introduct