91 So. 744 | La. | 1922
Two suits involving-the validity and correctness of plaintiff’s assessments, the one for the year 1919 and the other for the year 1920, of the same property, except as to one item, were consolidated for trial and argument, and form the subject of this appeal.
Plaintiff is a corporation having its domicile~aTriLansas OityTinthe staSTof Missouri. It owns a large amount of timber lands in the parish of Allen in this §tate, a sawmill, planing mill, and all the equipment necessary to operate a lumber manufacturing plant. The output of the plant, which has been in operation since about the year 1912 and is still in operation, is sold in open market as produced, in the shape of rough and dressed lumber. In these two suits, plaintiff seeks to have part of its assessment, for the years 1919 and 1920, reduced, and to have another part thereof canceled, as made upon property not subject to taxation in this state. Many of the issues involved in the pleadings, as filed originally, have been abandoned or settled to the satisfaction of both parties, and the questions to be decided on this appeal are reduced to the proper valuation of plaintiff’s sawmill, its planing mill, its logs in pond, and to the validity of an assessment, upon plaintiff’s open accounts and credits.
For the year 1920, plaintiff’s assessment was raised on its sawmill from $95,000 to $144,000 and on its planing mill from $20,-000 to $36,000. It was also assessed for credits in the sum of $73,000. The assessment for its logs in pond, for the year 1920, was raised from $21,378.78 to $41,438.
The district court annulled the assessments upon credits for both years 1919 and 1920, and reduced the assessment for logs in pond for the year 1920 to $21,378, and, from this judgment, the assessing officers of the state have appealed. Plaintiff has answered the appeal and prays that the assessments on the sawmill and planing mill he reduced to the amounts originally returned by it and that the assessment for logs in pond for the year 1919 be reduced to $3,435.
Opinion.
Our learned brother of the district court wrote a well-reasoned and elaborate opinion in this case, and he concludes that—
“the valuation given by the witnesses for the plaintiff are not shown to have been arrived at by a process of reasoning which is correct; that elements affecting values were omitted from their consideration; that there is no evidence that these elements were not duly considered, and the valuations properly derived therefrom by the assessing authorities; and that, therefore, the valuations fixed by them must be presumed to represent the correct actual cash values.”
In this finding we fully agree.
“shall likewise sit as a board of reviewers on the assessment, for state purposes on all property not heretofore assessed by the state board of appraisers,” etc.
The state board of appraisers was created to assess railroad-, telegraph, telephone, sleeping car, and express companies, and it is evident that the quoted expression was intended to confine the jurisdiction of police juries, sitting as boards of reviewers, to property not assessed by the state board of appraisers, and to exclude from their jurisdiction property belonging to railroad, telephone, telegraph, sleeping car, and express companies, and was not intended by the lawmaker to repeal section 3 of Act 182 of 1906. The purpose of. the Legislature, in enacting section 3 of Act 182 of 1906, was to penalize the- taxpayer who fails to produce a list of his taxable property or who purposely or inadvertently omits any of his taxable property from such list. It was recognized as constitutional, and it was enforced in the cases of Calcasieu Trust & Savings Bank v. Wetherell, 139 La. 454, 71 South. 765, and Marston v. Elliott, 138 La. 574, 70 South. 519. We therefore believe the trial judge properly refused to entertain plaintiffs’ contest on the item “logs in pond” in its assessment for the year 1919.
' The same item “logs in pond,” for. the year 1920, was reduced by the trial court from the amount fixed by the assessor to that fixed by plaintiif in its return. The defendant does not, in argument, contest the correctness of that ruling.
“That the notes, judgments, accounts and credits of such non-resident persons, firms, corporations, partnerships, associations, or companies doing business in the State of Louisiana, originating from the business done in this State, be and the same is hereby declared to be property with its situs within the State, and subject to taxation at the business domicile in this State of the said non-resident person, firm, corporation, partnerships, association, or company, or their business agent or repre*309 sentative, under the same rules and in the same manner that property of a like nature is assessed and taxed within the State of Louisiana.”
The facts are that plaintiffs’ domicile is in Kansas City, Mo., where it maintains its principal business office. Its managers superintend all of its business from the Kansas City office, where its books, in which are entered all of its accounts and credits, are also kept. The output of its lumber manufacturing plants, which are located in Louisiana, is sold upon orders which must be accepted in Kansas City, from which place deliveries are ordered to be made in various parts of the country, all shipments, however, originating from its plants in Louisiana. Deliveries are made all over the United States outside of this state, purchases by Louisiana customers are sometimes made from the mill but such sales may only be made for cash and constituted, for the year 1920, not over 3 per cent, of the output of its plant.
Plaintiff does not question the right of the state to tax credits and open accounts, as representing property, but it contends that its property, represented by credits and open accounts, has no situs in this state and is not therefore taxable here. Our learned brother of the district court so holds, in his well-considered and logical opinion, and it is this feature of his judgment which is most strenuously contested by defendant.
It is not questioned that persons, firms, or corporations may do business in states other than that of their domicile, but plaintiff’s contention is that its business, out of which its accounts and credits arise, is done in the state of Missouri. The act invoked by the tax-assessing authorities authorizes the taxation of credits arising from business done in this state. “Doing business,” in the sense in which it is applicable to plaintiff in this case, means selling the product which it manufactures in its lumber plants, and it appears, from the uncontested facts herein-before stated, that' plaintiff’s sales, from which taxable credits arise, are considered, made, and completed in Kansas City, at plaintiff’s actual domicile, and that the only incident connected with these sales, which takes place in Louisiana, is shipment, which is made from plaintiff’s mills. Under the language of the act, the credits do not arise from business done in this state, and they are therefore not taxable in this state. This conclusion in no wise conflicts with the decision of this court in General Electric Co. v. Board of Assessors, 121 La. 116, 46 South. 122, but, on the contrary, is supported by the reasons advanced in that opinion.
For these reasons, the judgment appealed from is affirmed.