127 Ga. 504 | Ga. | 1907
(After stating the facts.) The general tax act of 1904 (Acts 1904, p. 37) requires the president, superintendent, or agent of a manufacturing company to return for taxation the real estate of the company to the tax receiver of the county wherein it is located, and the personal property to the tax-receiver of the
The legislative policy in fixing a situs for the taxation of personal property is clearly apparent from these two enactments. In providing for the return of personalty for taxation three general classifications were made, to fit all possible conditions. The first was the ordinary case where the owner lived in the same county where the personal property was located; here no question can exist that the general rule mobilia personam sequuntur applies. The second classification was to embrace such instances as where the owner resided in one county and conducted a business enterprise in another county. In such instances the rule mobilia personam sequuntur was departed from, and all personalty connected with a business enterprise conducted in a county other than that of the owner’s residence was made taxable in the county where the business enterprise was conducted. The General Assembly indicated this intent by the exception contained in the amendment of 1904 to the Political Code, §826. The general tax act of 1904 made provision for an unusual condition of affairs, and created a third classification. There might exist a situation (as illustrated by the ease at hand) where the personalty is located in the county of the owner’s residence, yet is employed as an accessory to a business or manufacturing enterprise, located on a single tract of land which lay in two or more counties. The General Assembly in its wisdom applied the unit rule of taxation to this condition of affairs, and provided that the land and all personal property accessorial to the business or manufacturing enterprise should be taxable in the county where the main buildings (or most of them) of the business or manufacturing enterprise was conducted. No radical departure was made by this classification. The Political Code, § 826, before its amendment by the act of 1904, excepted two classes of personalty from the operation of the rule that the county of the owner’s residence was the taxable situs of personal property. Those exceptions included personalty 'belonging to mining companies, used in connection with -its mining business, and personalty employed in cultivating farms situated in a county other than that of the owner’s residence. Personalty of this bind was treated as an accessory of the land and was given the taxable situs of the land. Walton County v. Morgan County, 120 Ga. 548. Now, we regard
In one of the briefs of the defendant in error it is urged that inasmuch as the land on which the storehouse is located is taxable in Morgan county, personalty concerned in any business enterprise ■conducted on the land, though entirely disconnected with and not related to the main business of the corporation, is taxable in the county where the land is taxable. Perhaps if the mere literalism •of the act be adhered to, this contention might be sound. But .such a construction would be opposed to the manifest policy of the legislature, as gathered from the two legislative acts referred to; would be to create an arbitrary classification, and to depart from a natural, general, and coherent plan of taxation. Let ús suppose a case, as illustrative that the General Assembly could not have intended this literal construction. We will suppose that the land belonging to the plaintiff manufacturing company contained a thousand acres, ten of which are in Morgan county, and the re-. mainder in Walton county. We will suppose that the shape of the land was a long rectangle extending into Walton county a mile or more. On the extreme end of the land in Walton county the company erects a storehouse which it rents to a Walton-county citizen, who conducts a mercantile business thereon. Now, under such •circumstances could it be said that this legislation would require .a Walton-county citizen conducting a business in Walton county to pay taxes on his stock of merchandise to Morgan county, solely because the house he occupies and rents belongs to the High Shoals corporation, and is taxable with the land of the company in Morgan •county ? Most assuredly not. It is certainly more in keeping with the harmony of our taxing system to construe these acts to mean that the unit system was adopted in providing for the taxation of corporations or persons conducting a manufacturing or business enterprise on land lying in two or more counties. In such a case the land, buildings, and all accessorial personalty will be treated as a single unit and taxable in the county where the main buildings (or most of them) of the business or manufacturing enterprise are located.
On the hearing before the judge, for injunction, the manufacturing company contended that the operation of the mercantile
Judgment reversed.