217 F. 540 | 8th Cir. | 1914
This is a suit by the Union Pacific Railroad Company against the commissioners of Weld county, Colo., and its tax-collecting officers, to restrain the collection of state, county, and municipal taxes levied for the year 1912. The complaint charges, in substance, that the property of the railroad company was assessed at one-third of its actual value, while all other property was assessed at not to exceed one-fifth of its value. It is also charged that some classes of property which should properly have been assessed for purposes of taxation were wholly omitted by the assessors. These discriminations are alleged to have been systematic and deliberate. Application was made to the trial court for a temporary injunction. This was heard upon bill, answer, and affidavits, and a large volume of oral testimony, and was denied. The present appeal is brought to review •that order.
‘•In all eases where any person shall pay any tax, interest or costs, or any portion thereof, that shall thereafter he found to be erroneous or illegal, whether the same be owing to erroneous assessment, to improper or irregular levying of the tax, to clerical or other errors or irregularities, the board of county commissioners shall refund the same without abatement or discount to the taxpayer.”
Following the decision of the Supreme Court in Singer Sewing Machine Co. v. Benedict, 229 U. S. 481, 33 Sup. Ct. 942, 57 L. Ed. 1288, the trial court held that this statute affords a complete and exclusive remedy for the wrongs here complained of. The appeal raises two questions: (1) Has the statute been repealed as to the tax levy of 1912? (2) If the statute applies to the taxes of 1912, does it afford an adequate remedy?
Plaintiff claims that section 5750 above quoted was repealed by section 5 of chapter 134 of the Session Laws of 1913, which reads as follows:
“No abatement, rebate or refund of taxes shall be allowed by the county commissioners, unless a hearing shall be had thereon and a notice of such hearing and an opportunity to be present being first given to the assessor; and in case any abatement, rebate or refund of taxes shall be recommended by said county commissioners, they shall certify to the Colorado tax commission their findings, giving the amount of such abatement, rebate or refund, and their reasons therefor, and such abatement, rebate or refund, shall be*542 ■come effective upon, the indorsement thereon of the approval of the Colorado tax commission; and in case the said Colorado tax commission shall disapprove the recommendations of the county commissioners, they shall indorse their disapproval thereon and return it to the county commissioners with a statement of their reasons therefor, and no abatement, rebate or refund of taxes shall be allowed by the said board of county commissioners if the application is disapproved by the said Colorado tax commission.”
In our judgment this statute has nothing to do with the subject embraced in section 5750. It is confined wholly to the administrative functions 'of county commissioners. By numerous statutes of Colorado, those bodies are vested with power to revise tax proceedings, and, if assessments or taxes are found to be illegal, to abate or refund the same. See sections 5691 and 5641 of the Revised Statutes; section 13, subdivisions 1, 5, and 7, and section 14 of chapter 216 of the Session Raws of 1911. It is also probable that county commissioners, by virtue of their general control over the fiscal affairs of counties, would be vested with power to abate or refund taxes found by them to be illegal. There are numerous provisions in the statutes of the state which give color to such an authority. Section 5 of chapter 134 of the Laws of 1913, above quoted, is intended to place this power of county commissioners under the supervision of the Colorado tax commission. It simply forbids county commissioners to abate or refund taxes as the result of their own investigation and judgment without the consent of the state commission. It is not intended to take away their duty to pay any judgment recovered in court against the county under section 5750. The right created by that section is not dependent upon any action of county commissioners or other tax-, ing agencies. It is quite plain that such bodies, exercising their administrative power to relieve against erroneous or illegal taxes, would, if they found any tax to be erroneous or illegal, grant relief themselves, and in such a case there would be no occasion to resort to the courts under section 5750. The phrase in that section, “shall thereafter be found to be erroneous or illegal,” relates to a finding by a court in a judicial proceeding, and not to the action of administrative boards. To be sure, a taxpayer feeling aggrieved by the assessment of his property, or the levying of a tax, would be bound to seek redress by application to administrative boards clothed with power to 'grant him relief, before resorting to the courts; but the door to the court is not confined to an appeal from such administrative bodies. Any taxpayer aggrieved by taxing authorities, having exhausted the steps pointed out by statute to obtain relief from such bodies, may then pay the illegal exaction, and institute an independent action under section 5750 to recover any payment which he claims to be erroneous or illegal within the provisions of that section. It seems to us plain, therefore, that section 5 above quoted was not intended as a repeal of section 5750.
Counsel urges as an “equitable circumstance” that the tax will cast a cloud upon the title to the company’s real property. The remedy which the statute prescribes, however, will dissipate any such cloud. Those cases which hold that a cloud upon the title to real property affords a ground for equitable relief are not applicable, when the taxpayer is given the remedy of paying his taxes and recovering back any sum which the courts shall hold to have been illegally exacted.
Again, we are told that the remedy given by the statute will lead to multiplicity of suits. The county treasurer is, under the statutes of Colorado, the collector of all taxes, state, county, school and municipal. In the acounting system, which the law provides, he is required to pay over the taxes to the state, city, school, and town authorities as the same are collected. It is therefore urged that, if the plaintiff should pay the taxes here complained of, they would be promptly distributed to the several public treasuries on whose behalf they were levied, and that plaintiff would be compelled to resort to a separate suit against each of these in order to recover the money paid. These difficulties are all of counsel’s own creating. They do not exist in the statute. Its language is plain and comprehensive. It provides that:
“In all cases where any person shall pay any tax, interests or costs, or any portion thereof, that shall be found to be erroneous or illegal * * * the board of county commissioners shall refund the same, without abatement or discount, to the taxpayer.”
As to state taxes, there is an express provision giving to the county credit in its accounting with the state for any taxes that .have been refunded. We have no doubt that the same remedy would apply as to municipalities, and that the county treasurer could take credit in his settlements made from time to time with them for their proportion of any sum which the county was compelled to pay as a refund. Be this as it may, the lánguage of the statute is plain. It has existed for more than 40 years. It has been repeatedly held by the highest court of the state to afford the taxpayer a plain, speedy, and adequate remedy. We cannot, from speculative reasoning as to difficulties of accounting, hold that the aggrieved taxpayer will not receive, in a single suit against the county, the full compensation which the law provides. All these dangers as to multiplicity of suits were present in the case of Singer Sewing Machine Co. v. Benedict, 229 U. S. 481, 33 Sup. Ct. 942, 57 L. Ed. 1288, and in Indiana Mfg. Co. v. Koehne, 188 U. S. 681, 23 Sup. Ct. 452, 47 L. Ed. 651; and still the remedy provided by the statute was held to be plain, adequate, and complete, so as to exclude a resort to equity.
The decree of the trial court is affirmed.