Appellant contends that under the provisions of sec 70.11 (4), Stats., its real and personal property is exempt from taxation. This statute provides exemption for—
“Personal property owned by any . . . benevolent association . . . which is used exclusively for the purposes of suсh association, and the real property necessary for the location and convenience of the buildings of such . . . associаtion and embracing the same, not exceeding ten acres; provided, such real or personal property is not leased or оtherwise used for pecuniary profit. ...”
In order for appellant’s contention to be sustained it must appear that, (1) appellant is a benevolent association; (2) the personal property is used exclusively for the purposes of such association; (3) the reаl and personal property is not used for pecuniary profit.
What constitutes a hospital a benevolent association within the meaning of this statute has been considered in several cases and the tests to be applied have been discussed.
Order
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of the Sisters of St. Joseph v. Plover,
“The instant corporation is a benevolent institution because the members who оperate it are in the work of benevolence and receive and can receive no remuneration or compensation whatever for their services.”
Obviously neither a single test nor isolated answers to each of the questions posed above will automatically determine when a hospital is a benevolent association. The facts of each case must be regarded as a wholе and the substance of the scheme of operation as it exists must be examined. The Prairie du Chien Sanitarium Company, Inc., for the fiscal yeаr ending March 31, 1941, operated with a deficit of about $388, although respondent alleges this apparent deficit is due to improper boоkkeeping. It received donations from the members only. That such donations from the doctors do not make a hospital a benevolent association was decided in the Rogers Case, supra at page 512. Here during this period the individual doctors were making from $7,500 to $10,000 a *266 year. The manager was paid a salary of $140 per month. Appellant alleges that it takes all patients who apply, but so far as the record shows, the ten per cent of the patients whose accounts were not collected and who were classified as neither private nor county рatients were billed for regular charges and everything was done to collect these bills. It was said in Order of the Sisters of St. Joseph v. Plover, supra, that municipal patients were charitable patients, but the idea underlying- that classification was that the benevolent character of an institution as established by its being operated by a religious order and taking' all who applied for admission would not be affected by the fact that municipalities paid the costs of the care of certain patients. This leaves open the question of whether a private hospital contracting with a municipality for the care of indigents is engaged in a charitable undertaking- within the meaning of the tax statutes under other circumstances.
The chiеf point relied on to establish the benevolent character of appellant is that the doctors in charge of the hospital wеre not paid any salaries for their services as medical directors of the hospital or for the operations they performеd on county patients and those patients who came to the hospital without their own doctors. Whether it is exact to- say that these dоctors received no compensation for their services is doubtful. They got their offices in the hospital rent free as well as the use оf the hospital facilities and one meal a day. Whether or not the compensation was of value equivalent to the. services rendered, it is clear that there is not a complete absence of remuneration such as is found in the cases where all the work in the hоspital except medical services is performed by the members of a religious order.
This leads us to the second and third points of whethеr the property is used exclusively for the purposes of the association and whether it is used for pecuniary profit. An associatiоn or corporation claiming to be benevolent, in order to qualify its property for exemption from taxation, must use it so free
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from connection with profits accruing to' those owning it as clearly to be a charitable institution. Hence the personal property, grounds, and buildings of a hospital are not exempt when members of the owner association are using the hospital as an adjunct to their private business in such a way that it becomes a source of substantial help in the matter of earnings to be derived from the practice of thеir profession. On this point it seems clear that even if we assume that the hospital is a benevolent association, the property is used as much to advance the individual fortunes of the surgeons who manage it as it is for charitable purposes. There can be little doubt that the hospital is maintained primarily for the greater convenience and profit of the managing doctors in the practice of their рrofession. The doctors may, and under their management and control of the hospital did, give without recovering pay therefor of their timе and skill in cariñg for people who did not pay for such care, but by reason of the use of the hospital in relation to their private practice the benefits extended were those of the doctors and not a contribution to public welfare by a benevolent assоciation. While cases from other jurisdictions are of dubious value because of the difference in the statutes involved, it can be observed that under similar circumstances other courts have refused to allow freedom from taxation by incorporating hospitals as “benevolent institutions.” See
State v. Willmar
Hospital,
For the reasons stated above, the trial court properly held that appellant was not entitled to recover the taxes paid.
By the Court. — Judgment affirmed.