Taxing statutes must state with the utmost clearness what and whom and in what manner they are taxing.

Wallace, J.

1. The decision in this case turns on the interpretation of Section 93 of the District Municipalities Act. The Municipal Council of Madura has demanded profession tax from the Receiver of the Sree Meenakshi Devasthanam in Madura on income received by him from investments of surplus devesthanam funds. The devasthanam paid under protest and instituted this suit for a declaration that it was not liable for the tax and for an injunction to prevent collection. The sum in the suit is trifling, a matter of Rs. 2, but the legal and fiscal question involved is obviously of general importance.

2. So much of the decision in the case will turn on the exact wording of Section 93 (1) that it is better to quote it in full. Section 93, Sub-section 1:

If the chairman publishes a notification under Section 80, that a profession tax shall be levied, every person, not liable to the companies tax, who, within the Municipality and for the period laid down in Section 95, exercises after the date specified in the said notification a profession, art, trade or calling or holds any appointment public or private, or is in receipt of any pension or income from investments or money lending or any source other than houses and lands inside the Municipal limits bringing him within one or more of the classes of persons specified in Schedule IV, shall pay a half yearly tax on his professional income, salary and pension on the scale shown in the said schedule.

3. The section is headed profession tax and the marginal note is license tax on professions. The substance of Section 93 (1) which is necessary for purposes of this case, as I read it, is that every one in a Municipality who resides there for 60 days in the aggregate in the half year and is in receipt of income from investments shall pay a half yearly tax on his professional income. The short point at issue is whether the phrase professional income is a short, compendious phrase used to include all the kinds of income specified in the sub-section, as contended by the respondent, or whether it means income derived from the actual exercise of a profession, as contended by the appellant. According to the respondent, any income of the kind specified in the first part of the sub-section is taxable ; but according to the appellant such income is only taxable if and when it can be legitimately said to have been obtained from the exercise of a profession.

4. It cannot be gainsaid that the wording of the section is very unhappy. The word profession is not defined, but evidently it was not designed to cover all the sources of income specified in the sub-section. For example, profession as used in the sub-section does not mean art, trade, calling, holding an appointment, being in receipt of a pension, or an income from investments, etc. It cannot be here vised definitively of these other sources of income because, to define a word by using the word defined offends against all canons of interpretation. True the word is used as descriptive of the tax ; but that is merely a device to save time and multiplicity of words. The tax is on professions and other sources of income, but for purposes of short statement the tax is to be known as profession tax . I am unable to agree with the respondent that when the word is again met in its adjectival form professional it is used in its compendious sense and not in its definitive sense. Had the former been the idea, the addition of the words salary and pension would be not only unmeaning but misleading, since, profession in its compendious sense already includes the receipt of salary and pension, while the words professional income evidently exclude salary and pension. The appropriate, exhaustive, and compendious word before "income" would then have been the word "such" and not "professional". (Incidentally, it may be remarked that the use of the word "and" instead of "or" between "salary" and "pension" is also puzzling). We must then give some independent meanin