Possession or Use of an Instrument of Weight or Measure Which is So Deteriorated

June 30, 1959 BIR RULING NO. 318-59 Mr. A Yapchapco Chief, Weights & Measures Section Office of the Treasurer M a n i l a S i r : Reference is made to your letter dated June 25, 1959, requesting reconsideration of our ruling (B.I.R. Ruling No. 293) dated June 11, 1959. By way of supplementing the facts stated in your original letter, you stated, in effect, in your letter now under reply that instruments of weights and measures may be perfectly alight at the time they are inspected for the purpose of renewing their licenses. However, as the license is renewable every twelve months only it happens that after a period of six or seven months the numerals and graduations of an instrument are erased and thereby become hardly visible. And when this happens, merchants cheat the buying public by giving short weight or measure in making their sales. In answer thereto, please be informed that, after a thorough study of the matter, this Office finds no legal justification for taking a view different from that expressed in B.I.R. Ruling No. 293. For the rule is: "Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege" there is no crime where there is no law punishing it. There is no law, not even section 289 of the Tax Code, that punishes the possession or use of an instrument of weight or measure which is so deteriorated as to render the numerals and graduation thereof hardly discernable. However, it may be stated that, pursuant to section 279 of the same Code, "the receipt for the fee charged for the sealing of weights and measures shall serve as a license to use such instrument for one year from the date of sealing, unless deterioration or damage which renders the weight or measure inaccurate occurs in that period " (emphasis supplied). Moreover as already intimated in the ruling in question, to fall within the purview of said section 289, it is enough that a person fraudulently gives short weight or measure in the making of a sale. prcd Please be guided accordingly. Very truly yours, (SGD.) JOSE ARAAS Commissioner of Internal Revenue