Books ‘Sulekh Sarita Parts I to V’ are ‘Printed Books’: Exempted from GST: Delhi HC [Read Judgment]

The Delhi High Court, in a recent ruling, held that the books ‘Sulekh Sarita Parts I to V’ are ‘Printed Books’ classifiable under ‘HSN 4901’ and not ‘Exercise Books’ under ‘HSN 4820’ and are wholly exempted under the CGST Act as well as Delhi GST Act.

The petitioner approached the High Court challenging an AAR order wherein the authority had held that the books sold by the petitioners are classifiable as excisable goods and asked the petitioners to get registered if it had GST liability under Reverse Charge Mechanism.

Against the order, the petitioner raised a question that whether the books published by the Petitioner, viz., Sulekh Sarita Parts I to V are printed books classifiable as ‘Excisable Books’.

The bench comprising Justices S Muralidhar and Rekha Palli observed that an educational text is like a handholding exercise for a child. While in the first few pages, it may appear that the child is asked to mechanically reproduce from the printed text, as the course progresses, the child is encouraged to think on his or her own.

“This is what precisely this “workbook”, or as the Court would like to rephrase it, this “practice book” does. At the end of the course, by using these books, the attempt is to enhance the educational value addition as far as the child is concerned. The attempt is to help the child think on his own and to enable the teacher to evaluate the child’s output. By no means can it be said that these books are for enabling a child to merely copy words from a printed text in order to improve his or her own handwriting,” the bench said.

The bench further observed that the emphasis was on a “functional characteristics” of a book. “In other words, the Court must ask what purpose will the book serve? In this case, a question to be asked is whether the books in question merely help the child in improving the child‟s handwriting by providing space in a book by copying from a written text or does it pose questions to the child to answer and whether the teacher then can evaluate, on the basis of such answers, the child‟s ability and understanding? In the present case, the “workbooks‟ or „practice books‟ printed and sold by the Petitioner certainly fall in the latter category i.e. they test the child‟s knowledge, ask questions which the child has to answer, and facilitate evaluating the child‟s understanding.”

“Consequently, this Court is satisfied that in the present case, the books published and sold by the Petitioner are classifiable under HSN 49.01 and not HSN 48.02. In terms of Notification No.2/2017-Central Tax (Trade) dated 28th June 2017 i.e. Entry No.119 thereunder, such goods classifiable under HSN 49.01 i.e. ‘printed books, including Braille books’ are wholly exempted from tax,” the bench said.