CBH v Comptroller of Income Tax

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Chua F A J
• Judgment Date: 22 October 1981
• Neutral Citation: [1981] SGCA 14
• Date: 22 October 1981
• Subject Matter: Revenue Law,Income taxation,Whether gains from trade of property developer,Appeals,Appeal against assessments,s 10(1)(a) Income Tax Act (Cap 114)
• Docket Number: Civil Appeal No 59 of 1981
• Published date: 19 September 2003
• Defendant Counsel: Nand Singh Gandhi (Legal Officer)
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Plaintiff Counsel: Lim Chor Pee (Chor Pee & Co)

The Comptroller of Income Tax by his additional assessments dated 27 July 1972 assessed the appellant liable to tax in the sums of $82,127.14 and $179,146.60 for the years of assessment 1966 and 1968. The assessments were in respect of the appellant`s income earned from his trade as a property developer and dealer and exigible under s 10(1)(a) of the Income Tax Act, Cap 114. The Income Tax Board of Review affirmed the two additional assessments. The appellant brought an appeal against the Board`s decision to the High Court under s 81 of the Act. The learned judge in dismissing the appeal with costs expressed the view, after a careful consideration of the evidence and the grounds of decision of the Board, that there was ample evidence before the Board to justify its decision that the Comptroller was correct in raising the two additional assessments.

Against this decision, this appeal is brought before us.

The issue before the Board was whether the appellant`s gains or profits of $177,174 and $360,591 earned in Singapore in 1965 and 1967 as a result of the sales of two portions of a larger piece of land which the appellant had bought in 1949 were gains or profits from the trade of a property developer and dealer within the meaning of s 10(1)(a) of the Act. On this question, the Board in its oral judgment concluded: `As to the issue whether the sale of the two properties was in the course of the appellant carrying out a trade or business in dealing with land, the answer is in the affirmative`.

The proper test to apply in this appeal is to ask ourselves whether the Board had misdirected itself in law, or had proceeded without sufficient evidence in law to justify its conclusion. This approach was been endorsed by the Privy Council in International Investment Ltd v Comptroller-General of Inland Revenue [1979] 1 MLJ 4 It is also a summary of what Lord Radcliffe said in Edwards v Bairstow (1955) 36 TC 207, 229:

I think that the true position of the court in all these cases can be shortly stated. If a party to a hearing before Commissioners expresses dissatisfaction with their determination as being erroneous in point of law, it is for them to state a case and in the body of it to set out the facts that they have found as well as their determination. I do not think that inferences drawn from other facts are incapable of being themselves findings of fact, although there is value in the distinction between primary facts and inferences drawn from them. When the case comes before the court, it is its duty to examine the determination having regard to its knowledge of the relevant law. If the case contains anything ex facie which is bad law and which bears upon the determination, it is, obviously erroneous in point of law. But, without any such misconception appearing ex facie, it may be that the facts found are such that no person acting judicially and properly instructed as to the relevant law could have come to the determination under appeal. In those circumstances, too, the court must intervene. It has no option but to assume that there has been some misconception of the law and that this has been responsible for the determination. So there, too, there has been error in point of law. I do not think that it much matters whether this state of affairs is described as one in which there is no evidence to support the determination or as one in which the evidence is inconsistent with and

...