STAMPING RECEIPTS

Waipa Post, Volume 35, Issue 2100, 22 December 1927, Page 5

STAMPING RECEIPTS

THE LAW ON THE MATTER.

Recently a correspondent wrote to the Mercantile Gazette as follows: — "Sir,—After making a purchase of £ll worth of goods from a store, a receipt was given to me without a stamp. On asking that the receipt be stamped, I was informed that this was not necessary, as a cash sale required no stamp. I noticed that the word cash sale had been placed in the sale note with atubber stamp. I shall be glad if you will give us, through your columns, your opinion as to whether this is in order." The editor's reply was as follows: "Our correspondent did not get a receipt, but merely a memorandum of what he had purchased, which contained no acknowledgment by the owner or anyone on his behalf of paymentAs a matter of fact there was nothing owing, and no receipt was necessary) and our correspondent correctly described the document as a sale note. If a purchaser obtains personal possession of the goods at the time he buys and pays cash for them he is not compelled to obtain a receipt to protect' himself; he obtains the goods, the shopkeeper the money, and the transaction ends." On this point it is recalled that in 1923 the Commissioner of Stamps sued a Wellington firm for having failed to stamp a cash docket, of which the customer was given a carbon copy. The magistrate gave judgment against the Department. The Court of Exchequer in 1842 decided that when goods were delivered against cash no contract creating a debt was established, and, of course, no receipt was necessary. If a purchaser, having paid his money and with his goods in hand, pressed his demand for a receipt, he might be answered, "What for? You owe me nothing." If a very careful person replied, "You might sue me three months hence and set up that you had not been paid," the shopkeeper might well say, "Don't worry yourself, you have the goods—your money is in our hands and the transaction *so far as we are concerned is finished." '