Krishi Kalyan Cess - all or any?
IN para 152 of his Budget Speech 2016, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, "I propose to impose a Cess, called the Krishi Kalyan Cess, @ 0.5% on all taxable services, proceeds of which would be exclusively used for financing initiatives relating to improvement of agriculture and welfare of farmers. The Cess will come into force with effect from 1st June 2016. Input Tax credit of this cess will be available for payment of this cess."
The Finance Act 2016, Section 161 states, "There shall be levied and collected in accordance with the provisions of this Chapter, a cess to be called the Krishi Kalyan Cess, as service tax on all or any of the taxable services at the rate of 0.5 per cent. on the value of such services..."
Since the Finance Act and not the FM's speech has legal validity, let us accept that the tax is on all or any of the services.
What is the meaning all or any of the services
? Don't all services cover any of the services? Isn't all all-inclusive? What does the government propose to cover additionally under any? There are two options; there will be cess on
1. All the services or
2. Any of the services.
Now, who will decide whether the cess will be on all the services or any of the services? Even if it is levied on all services, the Government has the power to exempt any service. Obviously all includes any.
This must be the draftsman's over-anxiety to be safe. In Dickerson's The Fundamentals of Legal Writing, it is advised,
The draftsman should use adjectives such as "each", "every", "any", "all", "no", and "some" (technically known as pronominal indefinite adjectives) only when necessary. If the subject of the sentence is plural, it is almost never necessary to use such an adjective. (e.g., "Qualified State officers shall..."; "Qualified State officers may not..."). If the subject of the sentence is singular, use the pronominal indefinite only when the article "a" or "the" is inadequate, as when the use of "a" would allow the unintended interpretation that the obligation is to be discharged (or the privilege exhausted) by applying it to a single member of the class instead of to all of them. If it is necessary to use a pronominal indefinite, follow these conventions:
(1) If a right, privilege, or power is conferred, use "any" (e.g., "‘Any qualified State officer may......").
(2) If an obligation to act is imposed, use "each" (e.g., "Each qualified State officer shall...").
(3) If a right, privilege, or power is abridged, or an obligation to abstain from acting is imposed, use "no" (e.g., "No qualified State officer may...").
But then law writing is itself a very complicated affair. Dickerson also said, "a draftsman must be an intellectual eunuch. He must also be an emotional oyster. However deeply he may feel about the wisdom of the policy he is called upon to express, he must submerge his own feelings and act with scrupulous objectivity."
As Humpty Dumpty said, "'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."