Question

Ravi is a lecturer at a local private university in Penang. He specializes in the field of management. He discovered that there was a shortage of a particular textbook for one of his course. He requested his brother in Kuala Lumpur to purchase the textbook and mailed it to him. During his first class, he discovered that all his 150 students did not have the textbook. So, he took the initiative to send the book to the printing shop and made 150 copies of it and sold them to the students. He made a profit of RM5,000 out of this arrangement.
Required:
Would this profit of RM5,000 be taxable under the Income Tax Act 1967? Support your answer with the relevant badges of trade.

Answer 1

Yes, the profit of RM 5,000 will be taxable.

Under the Profit seeking motive in badges of Trade,

The profit made on this large number of transactions of taking photocopy and sale of the same was ‘an adventure in the nature of trade’. Hence, it is to be noted that on the fact that the purchase was not made for own use or investment purposes.Instead, the act was done with an intention of making profit .

Therefore, the same amount of RM 5,000 which was made as profit out of the transaction is taxable in the hands of Ravi, as income from other sources under the Income Tax Act.