Shaffer v. CarterShaffer v. Carter
delivered the opinion of the court.
These are two appeals, taken under circumstances that will be explained, from a single decree in a suit in equity brought by appellant to restrain the enforcement of a tax assessed against him for the year 1916 under the Income Tax Law of the State of Oklahoma, on the ground of the uncohstitutionality of the statute.
A previous suit having the same object was brought by him in the same court against the officials then in office, in which an application for an interlocutory injunction heard before three judges pursuant to § 266, Judicial Code, was denied, one judge dissenting.
Shaffer
v.
Howard,
250 Fed. Rep. 873. An appeal was taken to this court, but, pending its determination, the terms of office of the defendants expired, and, there being no law of the
After such dismissal, the present defendant Carter, as State Auditor, issued another tax warrant and delivered if to defendant Bruce, Sheriff of Creek County, with instructions to levy upon and sell plaintiff’s property in that county ill order to collect the tax in question; and the sheriff having threatened to proceed, this suit was commenced. An application for an interlocutory injunction, heard before three judges, was denied upon the authority of the decision in 250 Fed. Rep. and of certain recent decisions of this court. The decree as entered not only disposed of the application but dismissed the action. Plaintiff, apparently unaware of this, appealed to this court under § 266, Judicial Code, from the refusal of the temporary injunction. Shortly afterwards he took an appeal under § 238, Judicial Code, from the same decree as a final decree dismissing the action. The latter appeal is in accord with correct practice, since the denial of the interlocutory application was merged in the final decree. The first appeal (No. 531) will be dismissed.
The constitution of Oklahoma, besides providing for the annual taxation of all property in the State upon an ad valorem basis, authorizes (Art. 10, § 12) the employment of a variety of other means for raising revenue, among them income taxes.
The act in question is c. 164 of the Laws of 1915. Its first section reads as follows: “Each and every person in this State, shall be hable to. an annual tax upon the entire net income of such person arising or accruing from all sources during the preceding calendar year, and a like tax shall be levied, assessed, collected and paid annually upon the entire net income from all property owned, and of everv business, trade or profession carried on in this
Plaintiff, a non-resident of Oklahoma, being a citizen of Illinois and a resident of Chicago in that State, was at the time of the commencement of the suit and for several years theretofore (including the years 1915 and 1916) engaged in the oil business in Oklahoma, having purchased, owned, developed, and operated a number of oil and gas mining leases, and being the owner in fee of certain oil-producing land, in that State. From properties thus owned and operated during the year 1916 he received a net income exceeding $1,500,000, and of this he made, under protest, a return which showed that,
As ground for resorting to equity, the bill alleges that plaintiff is the owner of various oil and gas mining leases covering lands in Creek County, Oklahoma, and that the lien asserted thereon by virtue of the levy and tax warrant creates a cloud upon his title. This entitles him to bring suit in equity
(Union Pacific Ry. Co.
v.
Cheyenne,
• This contention is based, first, upon the provision of § 9 of c. 164, giving to the State Auditor the same power to correct and adjust an assessment of income that is given to .the county board of equalization in cases of
ad
Secondly, reference is made to § 7 of Subdiv. B, Art. 1, of c. 107, Oklahoma Laws 1915, p. 149, wherein it is provided that where illegality of a tax is alleged to arise by reason of some action , from which the laws provide no appeal, the aggrieved person on paying the tax may give notice to the officer collecting it, stating the grounds of complaint and that-suit will be brought against him; whereupon it is made the duty of such officer to hold the tax until the final determination of such suit if brought within thirty days; and if it be determined that the tax was illegally collected, the officer is to repay the amount found to b¿ in excess of the legal and correct amount. But this section is one of several that have particular reference to the procedure for collecting
ad valorem
taxes; and they are prefaced by this statement (p) 147): “Subdivision B. To the existing provisions of law relating to the
ad valorem
or direct system of taxation the following provisions are added:” Upon this ground, in
Gipsy
We deem it unnecessary to pursue further the question whether either of the statutory provisions referred to furnishes an adequate legal remedy against. income taxes assessed under an unconstitutional law, since one of the grounds of complaint in the present case is that, even if the tax itself be valid, the procedure prescribed by § 11 of the Income Tax Law for enforcing such a tax by imposing a lien upon the taxpayer’s entire property, as threatened to be put into effect against plaintiff’s property for taxes not assessed against the property itself and not confined to the income that proceeded from the same property, is not “due process of law,” within the requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment. For removal of a cloud upon title caused by an invalid lien imposed for a tax valid in itself, there appears to be no legal remedy. Hence, on this ground at least, resort was properly had to equity for relief; and since a court of equity does not “do justice by halves,” and will prevent, if possible, a multiplicity of suits, the jurisdiction extends to the disposition of all questions raised by the bill.
Camp
v.
Boyd,
Under the “due process of law” provision appellant makes two contentions: first, that the State is without jurisdiction to levy a tax upon the income of non-residents; and, secondly, that the lién is invalid because imposed upon all his property real and personal, without regard to its relation to the production of his income.
These are separate questions, and will be so treated. The tax might be valid, although the measures adopted for enforcing it were not. Governmental jurisdiction in matters of taxation, as in the exercise of the judicial function, depends upon the power to enforce the mandate of the State by action taken within its borders, either
in personam
or.
in rem
according to the circumstances of the case, as by arrest of the person, seizure of goods or lands, garnishment of credits, sequestration of rents and profits, forfeiture of franchise, ■ or the like; and the jurisdiction to act remains even though all permissible measures be not resorted to.
Michigan Trust Co.
v.
Ferry,
It will'be convenient to postpone the question of the lien until all questions as to the validity of the tax have been disposed of.
The contention that a State is without jurisdiction to impose a tax upon the income of non-residents, while raised in the present case, was more emphasized in
Travis
v.
Yale & Towne Mfg. Co.,
decided this day,
post,
60, involving the income tax law of the State of New York. There it was contended, in substance, that while a State may tax the property of a non-resident situate within its borders, or may tax the incomes of its own citizens and residents because of the privileges they enjoy under its constitution and laws and the protection they receive from the State, yet a non-resident, although conducting a business or carrying on an occupation there, cannot
This radical contention is easily answered by reference to fundamental principles. In our system of government the States have general dominion, and, saving as restricted -by particular provisions of the Federal Constitution, complete dominion over all persons, property, and business transactions within their borders; they assume and perform the duty of preserving and protecting all such persons, property, and business, and, in consequence, have the power normally pertaining to governments to resort to all reasonable forms of taxation in order to defray the governmental expenses. Certainly they are not restricted to property taxation, nor to any particular form of excises. In well-ordered society, property has value chiefly for what it is capable of producing, and the activities of mankind are devoted largely to making recurrent gains from the use and development of property, from tillage, mining, manufacture, from the employment of human skill and labor, or from a combination of some of these; gains capable of being devoted to their own support, and the surplus accumulated as an increase of capital. That the State, from whose laws property and business and industry derive the protection-and security without which production and gainful occupation would be impossible,"' is debarred from exacting a share of those gains in the form of income taxes for the support of the government, is a proposition so wholly inconsistent with fundamental principles as to be refuted by its mere statement. That it may tax the land but not the crop, the tree but not the
Income taxes are a recognized method of distributing the burdens of government, favored because requiring contributions from those who realize current pecuniary benefits under the protection of the government, and because the tax may be readily proportioned to their ability to pay. Taxes of this character were imposed by several-of the States at or shortly after the adoption of the Federal Constitution. New York Laws 1778, c. 17; Report of Oliver Wolcott, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, to 4th Cong., 2d sess. (1796), concerning Direct Taxes; American State Papers, 1 Finance, 423, 427, 429, 437, 439.
The rights of the several States to exercise the widest liberty with respect to the imposition of internal taxes always has been recognized in the decisions of this court. In
McCulloch
v.
Maryland,
And we deem it clear, upon principle as well as authority, that just as a State may impose general income taxes upon its own citizens and residents whose persons are subject to its control, it may, as a necessary consequence, levy a duty of like character, and not more onerous in its effect, upon incomes accruing to non-residents from their property or business within the State, or their occupations carried on therein; enforcing payment, so far as it can, by the exercise of a just control over persons and property within its borders. This is consonant with numerous decisions of this court sustaining state taxation of credits due to non-residents,
New Orleans
v.
Stempel,
That a State, consistently with the Federal Constitution, may not prohibit the citizens of other States from carrying on legitimate business within its borders like its own
Oklahoma has assumed no power to tax non-residents with respect to income derived from property or business beyond the borders of the State. The first section of the act, while imposing a tax upon inhabitants with respect to their entire net income arising from all sources, confines the tax upon non-residents to their net income from property owned and business, etc., carried on within the State. A similar distinction has been observed in our federal income tax laws, from one of the earliest down to the present.
1
The Acts of 1861 (12 Stat. 309) and 1864 (13 Stat.
No doubt is suggested (the former requirement of apportionment having been removed by constitutional amendment) as to the power of Congress thus to impose taxes upon incomes produced within the borders of the United States or arising from sources located therein, even though the income accrues to a non-resident alien. And, so far as the question of jurisdiction is concerned, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment imposes no greater restriction in this regard upon the several States than the corresponding clause of the Fifth Amendment imposes upon the United States.
It is insisted, however, both by appellant in this case and by the opponents of the New York law in
Travis
v.
Yale & Towne Mfg. Co.,
that an income tax is in its nature a personal tax, or a “subjective tax imposing personal liability upon the recipient of the income;” and that as to a
The fact that it required the personal skill and management of appellant to bring his income from producing property in Oklahoma to fruition, and that his management was exerted from his place of business in another. State, did not deprive Oklahoma of jurisdiction to tax the income which arose within its own borders. The personal element cannot, by any fiction, oust the jurisdiction of the State within which the income actually arises and whose authority over it operates in rem. At most, there might be a question whether the value of the service of management rendered from without the State ought not to be allowed as an expense incurred in producing the income; but no such question is raised in the present case, hence we express no opinion upon it.
The contention that the act deprives appellant and others similarly circumstanced of the privileges and immunities enjoyed by residents and citizens of the State of Oklahoma, in violation of § 2 of Art. IV of the Constitu
One of the rights intended to be secured by the former provision is that a citizen of one State may remove to and carry on business in another without being subjected in property or person to taxes more onerous than the citizens of the latter State are subjected to.
Paul
v.
Virginia,
• Appellant contends that there is a denial to non-citizens of the privileges and immunities to which they are entitled, and also a denial of the equal protection of the laws, in that the act permits residents to deduct from their gross income not only losses incurred within the State of Oklahoma but also those sustained outside of that State, while non-residents may deduct only those incurrecf within the
It is urged that, regarding the tax as imposed upon the business conducted within the State, it amounts in the case of appellant’s business to a burden upon interstate commerce, because the products of his oil operations are shipped out of the State. Assuming that it fairly appears that his method of business constitutes interstate commerce, it is sufficient to say that the tax is imposed not upon the gross receipts, as in
Crew Levick Co.
v.
Pennsylvania,
Reference is made to the gross production tax law of 1915 (c. 107, Art. 2, Subdiv. A, §1; Sess. Laws 1915, p. 151), as amended by c. 39 of Sess. Laws 1916 (p. 104), under which every person or corporation engaged in producing oil or-natural gas within the State is required to pay a tax equal to 3 per centum of the gross value of such product in lieu of all taxes imposed by the State, counties, or municipalities upon the land dr the leases, mining rights,
The contention that there is a want of due process in the proceedings for enforcement of the tax, especially in the lien imposed by § 11 upon all of the delinquent’s property, real and personal, reduces itself to this: that the State is without power to create a lien upon any property of a non-resident for income taxes except the very property from which the income proceeded; or, putting it in another way, that a lien for an income tax may not be imposed upon a non-resident’s unproductive property, nor upon any particular productive property beyond the amount of the tax upon the income that has proceeded from it.
But the facts of the case do not raise this question. It clearly appears from the averments of the bill that the whole of plaintiff’s property in the State of Oklahoma consists of oil-producing land, oil and gas mining leaseholds, and other property used in the production of oil and gas; and that, beginning at least as early as the year 1915,
No. 531. Appeal dismissed.
No. 580. Decree affirmed.
Notes
Acts of August 5, 1861, c. 45, § 49, 12 Stat. 292, 309; June 30, 1864, c. 173, § 116, 13 Stat. 223, 281; July 4, 1864, Joint Res. 77, 13 Stat. 417; July 13, 1866, c. 184, § 9, 14 Stat. 98, 137-138; March 2, 1867, c. 169, § 13, 14 Stat. 471, 477-478; July 14, 1870, c. 255, § 6, 16 Stat. 256, 257; August 27, 1894, c. 349, § 27, 28 Stat. 509, 553; October 3, 1913, c. 16, § II, A. Subd. 1, 38 Stat. 114, 166; September 8, 1916, c. 463, Title I, Part I, § 1, a, 39 Stat. 756; October 3, 1917, c. 63, Title I, §§ 1 and 2, 40 Stat. 300; February 24, 1919, c. 18, §§ 210, 213 (c), 40 Stat. 1057, 1062, 1066.