Judgment :- RAJAGOPALAN, J. The relevant facts were never in dispute. The assessee is a Hindu undivided family, represented by its kartha, with his residence at Pattamangalam. Up to June 1, 1944, the assessee had five lines of business, two in India, money-lending at Pattamangalam and a perfumery at Bombay, and three in Ceylon. On June 1, 1944, the assessee transferred all the items of the Ceylon business to a company, Avra Ltd., in which apparently the assessee obtained a large interest. The assessee continued its money-lending and perfumery business without a break in the chargeable accounting periods with which we are now concerned, June 1, 1944, to March 31, 1945, and April 1, 1945, to March 31, 1946. In both those periods the assessee family sustained a loss in the business which it continued in India. That and the statutory minimum of standard profits, Rs. 36, 000, were taken into account, and the deficiency was worked out by the Department at Rs. 35, 793 and Rs. 48, 253 respectively for the two chargeable accounting periods. The assessee, which had apparently paid excess profits tax in the prior accounting periods, when it owned all the five lines of business, contended that the ascertained deficiency in the chargeable accounting periods should be made the basis of the grant of relief under section 7 of the Excess Profits Tax Act with reference to the excess profits tax paid by the assessee anterior to the chargeable accounting periods in question. The Department negatived that claim, and the Tribunal confirmed that decision The Tribunal referred the following question under section 66(1) of the Indian Income-tax Act : "Whether the assessee is entitled to deficiency reliefs of Rs. 35, 793 and Rs. 48, 253 for the chargeable accounting periods, June 1, 1944, to March 31, 1945, and April 1, 1945, to March 31, 1946, respectively against the excess profits taxed up to May 31, 1944, under section 7 of the Excess Profits Tax Act ?" * In paragraph 22 of its order on appeal, set out as annexure 'B' to the statement of the case, the Tribunal recorded "In the scheme of excess profits taxation, identity of the businesses, is an important consideration, though eventually the assessee is the owner by virtue of section 2(5) of the Excess Profits Tax Act. In the case on hand, it has not been shown that all the businesses assessed for excess profits tax in the past are one and indivisible, so that the present contention of the assessee is clearly untenable. No doubt, deficiency relief is due for the continuing businesses to the extent to which they have been charged to excess profits tax before. It is, however, a matter of record that none of the Indian businesses at any time before contributed directly or indirectly to the excess profits tax liability of the assessee." * Learned counsel for the Department submitted that while the reasoning may not be correct, the conclusion reached by the Tribunal, that the assessee was not entitled to the relief that he claimed, could be supported on other grounds. Learned counsel pointed out that the transfer of the Ceylon business to Avra Ltd. on June 1, 1944, attracted the provisions of section 8(1) of the Act, and that, while section 8(5) entitled the assessee to a computation of the standard profits for the untransferred items of its business, there was no statutory basis for the grant of a deficiency relief with reference to the excess profits tax already paid on the profits of the composite business, which had belonged to the assessee, before it was split up into what can be called for purposes of convenience at least as the transferred and the untransferred items of business. That contention is supported by authority, Govindarajulu Chettiar v. Commissioner of Excess Profits Tax, a decision to which one of us was a partyIt is true, as the learned counsel for the assessee pointed out, that the statutory definition of business in section 2(5) of the Act includes in it all the lines of business which belongs to the assessee, and that section 8(1) requires in effect only the identity of the owner of the business and not the identity of the business itself, that is of all the component parts of that business. Learned counsel further urged that section 8(1) comes into play only when there is a change in the persons that owned the business and not when there is only a change in the component items of the business carried on without any change in ownership. Learned counsel further urged that section 8(1) comes into play only when there is a change in the persons that owned the business and not when there is only a change in the component items of the business carried on without any change in ownership. The further contention of the learned counsel for the assessee was that with reference to the untransferred items of the assessee's business there was no change of ownership at all, and, therefore, section 8(1) of the Act did not apply to the untransferred business of the assessee : section 8(1) could only apply to the items of business transferred to Avra Ltd., and that business alone would be a new business from the date of the transfer within the meaning of section 8(1) of the Act. Learned counsel, however, realised that the decision of this court in Govindarajulu Chettiar v. Commissioner of Excess Profits Tax, barred the acceptance of such a contention, and his endeavour was to convince us that that decision required reconsideration We heard the learned counsel for the assessee as if the question at issue were res integra. We have, however, come to the conclusion, that we should accept as correct the principles laid down in the earlier decision of this court in Govindarajulu Chettiar v. Commissioner of Excess Profits Tax Section 8(1) of the Act comes into play when there is any change in the persons carrying on a business. Up to June 1, 1944, the business belonged to the assessee, what we can label as the composite business consisting of five items. Three of those items were transferred, and there was certainly a change in the persons that there after carried on those three items of business, that is after June 1, 1944. Equally certainly there was no change in the ownership of the remaining two items of business, which the assessee continued to own in the relevant chargeable accounting periods. There was thus a change in the ownership of a part of the business that the assessee carried on, a change in the persons carrying on a part of the business which had belonged to the assessee. The word "business" in section 8(1) has to be given its statutory meaning. In the case of the assessee the business meant the aggregate of the five items, what we refer to as the composite business. The word "business" in section 8(1) has to be given its statutory meaning. In the case of the assessee the business meant the aggregate of the five items, what we refer to as the composite business. Whether there was a change in the ownership of the whole of that composite business, or whether the change in the ownership was only of a part of that composite business, there was a change in the persons carrying on the business within the meaning of section 8(1) of the Act. That was the principle laid down in Govindarajulu Chettiar v. Commissioner of Excess Profits Tax, which we reaffirm as correct. While section 8(1) did not require in the case of the assessee the continuity as such of the composite business with all its five component elements, as that continuity was impaired by a transfer of a part of that composite business, which resulted in a change in the persons carrying on the business. section 8(1) came into play, and each of the two groups, the transferred and untransferred lines of business, became by the operation of the statutory fiction enacted by section 8(1) a new business. The fiction enacted by section 8(1) of the Act is for all the purposes of the Act. The scope of the further fiction enacted by section 8(5) is more limited, as was pointed out in Govindarajulu Chettiar v. Commissioner of Excess Profits TaxGovindarajulu Chettiar v. Commissioner of Excess Profits Tax, is binding on us as authority. We have re-examined the position and re-affirmed the correctness of the principle laid down in the above case, which itself distinguished and explained the scope of the earlier decision of this court in Ramaswami Raja v. Commissioner of Excess Profits tax, where there was a change in the composition of the business, but that change did not involve any transfer of any part of what had been a composite business We answer the question referred to this court in the negative and against the assessee. The assessee, which has failed, will pay the costs of this reference. Counsel's fee Rs. 250 Question answered in the negative.