Textbooks / Guides - Tutorial Assesse - Professtional Enternce Exams - Plant - Deprication @ 60 %

Textbooks/Guides purchased by tutorials/coaching centre preparing students for professional entrance exams are 'plant' entitled for depreciation @ 60% and not 100% 

• Expenditure on study materials (in book form) supplied by tutorial to students for their use and retention (being examination specific and their cost covered in fees charged and not returnable/returned) is revenue expenditure

• Teaching and/or coaching is a specialised vocation, requiring a high degree of knowledge, aptitude and skill; therefore, books used for teaching/coaching to be regarded as used for a professional activity

• Books, including annual publications, are per se capital expenditure and, thus, 'plant' and are not revenue expenditure; enduring nature and not Permanence is an attribute of a capital expenditure (capital asset); reason necessitating purchase of new editions of guidebooks/textbooks is not that content of old books becomes obsolete but that examiner would adopt newer/different methods of testing understanding and skills of examinees, so as to select those with a sounder understanding and better comprehension of subject; this, in itself, would not make books(textbooks/guidebooks) 'annual publications' eligible for 100% depreciation nor revenue expenditure as old books do not become redundant which is borne out by fact that these are retained over years

• Therefore, textbooks/guides purchased by tutorials preparing students for professional entrance exams and used for teaching purposes are 'plant' entitled for depreciation @ 60% and not 100%; expenditure incurred on study materials (even though these are in book form) supplied by assessee-tutorial/Coaching Centre to students for their use and retention (being examination specific and their cost being covered in fees charged to students and not returnable/returned) is revenue expenditure entitled for 100% deduction - [2012] 18 taxmann.com 359 (Cochin - Trib.)