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Judgment
Horace Owen Compton Beasley, Kt., C.J.—The respondent is a retired Subordinate Judge. He retired from service on 6th September,
1930, on a pension. Under the Madras District Municipalities Act he was liable to pay profession tax to the Petitioner, the Municipal Council,
Salem, half-yearly. In 1931 he commuted a portion of his pension, viz., Rs. 150 a month for a lump sum of Rs. 17,820. The Petitioner levied
profession tax on that sum in addition to the tax payable on the uncommuted pension treating it as a receipt of pension. The Respondent refused to
pay the tax in respect of that sum, but later on paid it under protest and sued the Petitioner in the District Munsif s Court for a refund of the tax
paid. The District Munsif gave a decree in favour of the Respondent here holding that the sum received in lieu of the portion of his pension when it
was commuted was no longer pension and therefore was not taxable under the Act. With this view we entirely agree. Pension has been defined in
The Secretary of State for India in Council v. Khemchand Jeychand ILR (1880) 4 Bom. 432 as ""a periodical allowance or stipend for past
services""; in Lachmi Narain v. Makund Singh ILR (1904) 26 All. 617 ""a periodical payment of money"" to the pensioner. Amna Bibi v. Naju-un-
nissa ILR (1909) ILR R. 31 All. 382 and Sir Wasif Ali Mirza Nawab Bahadur v. Karnani Industrial Bank, Ltd. (1931) L.R. 58 I.A. 215 : ILR 59
Cal. 1 : 61 M.L.J. 208 also give the same description to ""pension"". When a pension is commuted there is no longer any periodical payment: the
pensioner receives once and for all a lump sum in lieu of the periodical payments. The; pension is changed into something else, and becomes a
capital sum. In an English case, Crowe v. Priced it was held that money paid to a retired officer of His Majesty''s forces for the commutation of his
pension does not retain its character as pension so as to prevent it from being taken in execution. On p. 217, Coleridge, C.J. says:
It is clear to me that commutation money stands on an entirely different ground from pension money, and that if an officer commutes his pension for
a capital sum paid down, the rules which apply to pension money and make any assignment of it void, do not apply to this sum.
In our view the District Munsif was clearly right and we dismiss the Petition with costs.