Law of Sales and Principles of VAT

This is a book on the law of sales and on principles of the imposition of sales tax or VAT.
All of us, young or old, rich or poor, enter into transactions related to sale or purchase of goods every day—we purchase when we buy a newspaper, a carton of milk or a motor car. A newspaper vendor sells goods as does the shopkeeper. The book discusses the law on the subject: the right of the seller to receive payment and the right of the buyer to receive goods of the kind and quality he wants. Though the transaction is usually quite straightforward and simple, there are endless variations that arise when goods are to be delivered later, or when the sale is on credit, each of which can create legal problems.

The various legal problems arising in such transactions are fully examined, including: the meaning of ‘goods’ and ‘documents of title’; the distinction between contracts of sale, sales proper, between sales and other relationships resembling sales such as agency and hire purchase; the obligations of the parties relating to the time of delivery and the quality and suitability of goods; the inter se rights of the sellers and the buyers as to when property in the goods and title to the goods passes; the rights and remedies of the unpaid seller and the buyer who has not received the goods in time, or at all, or who has received goods which are not of the kind or quality he had agreed to buy. Auction sales are a special kind of sale and the book discusses the rights of all the parties involved: the seller, the auctioneer, and the auction purchaser.
Virtually, all sales attract sales tax, generally known as VAT, a tax generally imposed in India by the state legislatures. The Constitution regulates and restricts the power of states to levy sales tax. These topics are exhaustively considered in the work as also the concept of ‘deemed sales’, ie, transactions which, in law, are not sales but on which sales tax or VAT can be imposed. The book will be very useful to determine when sales tax or VAT can be levied, though it does not consider the formalities which the seller of goods is required to comply with under the VAT laws.