357 U.S. 913 | SCOTUS | 1958
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
The petitions for rehearing in these cases should be granted. Petitioners direct attention to the statement in the Court’s opinion of March 3,1958, 355 U. S. 489, 492 (Prelim. Print), that “There is no contention that these taxes were levied directly against the United States or its property.” The contentions made by the parties throughout this litigation and the characteristics of the taxes sustained make evident that the case was decided under a misapprehension of what was in issue. Simply to delete from the quoted sentence reference to what the parties contended, as has now been done, cannot delete the significance of its original inclusion in the opinion as a manifestation of the direction of the Court’s thoughts. In reaching the conclusion that the tax here involved is indistinguishable from a tax on the privilege of possessing or using government property, the Court proceeded on mistaken notions about Michigan tax law and its administration.
The petitions for rehearing make more vivid than did the original briefs the distinction between the ad valorem property tax that was in fact imposed and a privilege tax with which the former was identified. The distinction is deeply embedded in Michigan statutory and constitutional law, and guides taxing authorities in their administration of the local statutes. The tax that Michigan levied and this Court sustained is imposed on the prop
The petitions for rehearing have thrown into sharp relief the fact that the tax here imposed is simply an ordinary ad valorem tax imposed on the property, a tax indistinguishable from that in United States v. County of Allegheny, 322 U. S. 174. Therefore this tax is sustainable, unless Michigan law is to be construed in a way wholly at variance with the actual provisions of the state statutes and demonstrated administrative practice thereunder, only by disregarding Allegheny or overruling it. The Court does not purport to overrule Allegheny. The erroneous hypothesis about Michigan law underlying the Court’s opinion could hardly have failed to obscure the full implications of the decision the Court was called upon to make. Due regard for the importance of these cases — as a matter of federal finance, of course, but even more so from the point of view of federal-state relations — and the demands of sound adjudication call for reargument. The Court would then be able to consider the power of a State to levy a tax undis-
Lead Opinion
356 U. S. 489. Petitions for rehearing of the Murray Corporation of America and the United States denied.