136 Mich. 265 | Mich. | 1904
(after stating the facts). Tbe provision of the tax law under which plaintiff asserts tbe liability of tbe defendant is as follows:
“All corporate property, except where some other provision is made by law, shall be assessed to the corporation as to a natural person, in tbe name of tbe corporation. Tbe place where its office is located in its articles of incorporation shall be deemed its residence: Provided, its business is actually transacted at such office; but if it shall establish its principal office in any other place than tbe place named in its articles of incorporation, then tbe place where it ■ transacts its principal business shall be deemed its residence for all tbe purposes of this act.” Section 3834, 1 Comp. Laws.
Tbe defendant is organized under chapter 160, 2 Comp. Laws. Tbe law requires that tbe articles of association shall state the character of tbe business to be conducted, and the location of tbe same. Tbe law contemplates that
The character of the business and the purposes of a corporation are important elements in determining its situs for taxation. ' The only property of the defendant requir
Counsel for the city rely upon Detroit Transportation Co. v. Detroit Board of Assessors, 91 Mich. 382 (51 N. W. 978). There is no similarity between the facts of that case and those of this. That was a suit in mandamus, and the return of the respondents was conclusive. The relator was a transportation company, doing business upon the Lakes. It located its first office at a roadhouse in the township of Hamtramck, and, when the territory where that was located was annexed to the city, it moved its office to a farm-house, where it had no property and no business, and could not have. None of its directors or stockholders lived in the township of Hamtramck. They lived in Detroit. All of its business was done at the Detroit office. The answer also showed that the stockholders never held a meeting at this roadhouse, but rode up past it and back in a street car, and held their meetings. We said in that case:
‘ ‘ The citizen has a right to reside in the country and do business in the city. This, however, must be an actual residence. One cannot maintain a nominal residence in the country while his actual residence is in the city, and thus avoid taxation in the city. A corporation possesses*273 the same right in this respect that the individual does. A corporation must have a local habitation. It cannot fix a nominal domicile in the country while its actual domicile for business is in the city.”
In this case the office is fixed at the home of one of the principal shareholders and the treasurer of the company, upon the most valuable single piece of real estate owned by it. A majority of the shareholders are nonresidents of Detroit. It is as much the duty of the defendant, through its officers, to look after the property at Grosse Pointe Farms, as it is to look after the property iñ Detroit, Bay City, or elsewhere. If the defendant’s detail books had been kept at the Grosse Pointe Farms, but the rents had been collected, taxes paid upon the Detroit property, and that property taken care of by a clerk or other person in an office in the city of Detroit, would a jury or court be justified in saying that, because inore of its business was done in Detroit than at Grosse Pointe Farms, that was its principal office ? We think that the defendant had a right to locate its place of business at Grosse Pointe Farms, and that that is its place for the purpose of taxation. In this view of the case it becomes unnecessary to discuss the alleged errors in the charge of the court, inasmuch as the jury reached the correct conclusion.
Judgment affirmed.