The Court of Appeal has confirmed that a woman was correctly disqualified from claiming her prize in the Value Added Tax lottery because the receipt she submitted was invalid.
The judgment was delivered in a case filed by Josephine Aquilina against the VAT Department, the Director of Public Lotto and the VAT lottery board. The court heard that on July 1, 2000 Ms Aquilina had purchased some items from the Coin outlet, in Sliema, for Lm10.98. She was given a 50 per cent discount and paid Lm5.49. Both sums of money were shown on the receipt she was given. The winning numbers for receipts issued in the fortnight between July 1 and July 15, 2000 included "98" but when Ms Aquilina tried to claim payment from the VAT Department she was told that her receipt was not valid for lottery purposes.
The court noted that on July 25, 2000 the VAT lottery board had disqualified three receipts (including Ms Aquilina's) on grounds that the number of cents on the total amount paid by the customers did not tally with any of the winning numbers drawn.
The First Hall of the Civil Court had dismissed Ms Aquilina's request for payment from the VAT Department and she appealed to the Court of Appeal composed of Chief Justice Vincent Degaetano, Mr Justice Anton Depasquale and Mr Justice Albert J. Magri.
The whole issue, the appellate court noted, revolved around the cents indicated in the receipt submitted by Ms Aquilina. It was clear from her receipt that the value of the items she had purchased was Lm10.98 and this figure was indicated as a sub-total.
After receiving a discount, Ms Aquilina had paid Lm5.49 for her purchases, and this sum was shown on the receipt as "Amount Payable".
The court had, therefore, to decide which figure in cents was to be considered for the purposes of the VAT lottery.
The law on which Ms Aquilina had based her claim was Legal Notice 86 of 1997 that described the component features of the cash register keyboard. These included the "discount key" for entering a discount to a sale, the "total key" to allow payment to take place and to close off the transaction, and the "sub-total key" which displayed and printed the transaction total.
Ms Aquilina claimed that the first court had not taken this law into consideration.
But the Court of Appeal found that she was not correct in her submission. The first court had concluded that the amount of cents that had to be taken into consideration for the purposes of the lottery was the amount actually paid by Ms Aquilina after benefiting from the discounts.
This conclusion was confirmed by the Court of Appeal which ruled that it was the cents on the total amount printed on the fiscal receipts that entitled a person to claim payment from the VAT Department. The receipt, the court ruled, had to refer to the payment actually made by the consumer.
In this case, Ms Aquilina had paid Lm5.49 and this was the total sum shown on the fiscal receipt.
Ms Aquilina's appeal was dismissed with costs.