Kodak (Australasia) Pty Limited v The Commonwealth of Australia & Anor; The Commonwealth of Australia & Anor v Genex Corporation

This matter before the High Court of Australia involved two consolidated appeals: *Kodak (Australasia) Pty Limited v The Commonwealth of Australia & Anor* and *The Commonwealth of Australia & Anor v Genex Corporation*. The core dispute concerned the application of sales tax provisions, specifically sections 17 and 17A of the relevant Act, to the use of photographic negatives by manufacturers.

The legal issues before the Court included whether the use of photographic negatives by a manufacturer for their own purposes, such as shining light through them for the purpose of producing prints, constituted an application of those negatives to their own use in a manner that would attract sales tax. A further issue was whether such an application would create a second or additional tax liability beyond any tax already imposed upon the initial sale or acquisition of the negatives.

The Court considered the interpretation of section 17A(1), which deems a sale to have occurred when goods are applied by a manufacturer to their own use. The argument presented was that while this section might deem a sale, it does not automatically create a new exigibility for tax. The Court's reasoning focused on section 17, which imposes tax on three alternative bases, but only once. It was argued that once a taxing point is crossed under one of these alternatives, the force of section 17 is spent. This could be due to the exclusion of other alternatives or because, at the point of delivery or deemed sale, the items in question no longer meet the definition of "goods" for the purposes of the Act, thereby preventing a second taxing point from arising.