80 Md. 7 | Md. | 1894
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented by this appeal arises on the fol- • lowing facts: Harriet E. Van Wyck, a resident of Baltimore City, died on March ninth, 1892, possessed of a considerable personal estate that had never, been entered on the assessment books, but which was liable to be assessed for State and municipal taxation. On .May the fourth her executors returned to the Orphans’ Court an inventory of this property, and shortly thereafter the Register of Wills, in obedience to Sec. 9, of Art. 81, of the Code, furnished to the Appeal Tax Court a copy of the inventory. Thereupon the Appeal Tax Court notified the decedent’s executors that this property would be placed on the assessment .books for the year 1892, and on May the twelfth, just two days after the levy for 1892 had been made by the Mayor and City Council, the Appeal Tax Court entered this omitted property on the assessment books. The appellant, who is the collector of State and City taxes for 1892, made demand upon the appellees for the taxes due with respect to this property for the year 1892, but they declined to pay them upon the ground that their testatrix had not been charged with this property on the assessment books on the first Monday of March, 1892, but had been charged therewith two days after the actual levy of the tax for that year. A pro forma judgment was entered against the collector by the Baltimore City Court and from that judgment this appeal has been taken.
It is the declared policy of the organic law as embodied in the fifteenth article of the Declaration of Rights, that every person shall contribute to the support of the government according to his actual worth in real or personal property. As a means for ascertaining each individual’s appropriate proportion, or his just contribution, general assessment laws have been passed at irregular periods; and, with the same
It is not, however, upon the property actually listed or assessed that taxes of this sort are levied. They are levied against the individual, and not upon his property at all. The extent of his liability is measured by the amount of his assessable, and not by the amount of his assessed property; and if his assessable property is not actually assessed he is not thereby relieved or exempted. So far, then, as concerns his obligation to contribute his just share of such taxes, it is wholly immaterial whether his property has been assessed or not, for the obligation is dependent not upon the circumstance or accident of assessing, but upon the fact of his ownership. When, therefore, for the convenient and methodical ascertainment of values a definite day has been prescribed by statute or by ordinance as the time when the valuation of things actually valued shall be final, the power to value and to add to the assessment books other and different things is necessarily not abridged or interfered with. This seems to us to be essentially so as a plain result from the language and intent of the organic law. But without resting solely on this deduction there are acts of Assembly and ordinances of the city which directly warrant the claim that the State and the municipality assert through the collector.
Sec. 10 óf Art. 81 of the Code of Public General Laws
If assessable property has been omitted from the assessment books or has escaped assessment when it ought to have been assessed, the fact that it has not been discovered and valued and placed upon the assessment books until after the levy has been made, cannot release its owner from paying taxes on account thereof, and cannot defeat the right of the State or the municipality to demand and collect those taxes. In the case of the American Coal Co. v. Co. Com. Al. Co., 59 Md. 185, it appeared that the coal company was assessed upon its real estate, and that taxes were levied against it by the County Commissioners prior to the first day of July, 1880, and within the time fixed by Sec. 6, of Art. 25, of the Code, for the levying of taxes; that the State Tax Commissioner valued the shares of stock of the company, from which valuation the company took an appeal to the Comptroller and Treasurer of the State, and that this appeal was not disposed of until July 22nd; that upon the next day the Tax Commissioner forwarded to the County Commissioners a certificate of the assessment of these shares of stock, and that within a few days thereafter the County Commissioners made a levy of taxes on this assessed value of the stock. It was objected, that as the levy on those shares had not been made prior to the first day of July, 1880, but was in fact made more than three weeks thereafter, it was illegal and void; but this Court upheld the levy. In dealing with the provision which directs the levy to be made
If any effect is to be given to the statutes and ordinances providing for the assessment of escaped or omitted property, we are at a loss to see how it can be done other than by the mode pursued in this instance.
We think there was error in granting the defendants’ prayer and in rejecting the plaintiff’s, and as a consequence the proforma judgment must be reversed and the case must be remanded, to the end that a judgment may be entered for the appellant for the amount claimed.
Judgment reversed with costs above and below and case remanded that judgment may be entered for the appellant.