28 Vt. 188 | Vt. | 1855
The opinion of the court was delivered, at the circuit session in September, 1856, by
I. The first question made in this case is, whether stocks of one of the American states, held by a trustee, under a will, the income of which, only, is to be paid to a married woman, or other person, but the principal of which is, after the the decease of such person, to go into the mass of the estate, and be disposed of, under the will, is to be set in the list, to the person receiving the income, or to the executor of the estate.
The 5th paragraph in § 15 chapter 80 of the Compiled Statutes, seems to us to require the assessment to be made to the person receiving the income. It speaks of the money as being held in trust, but it does not intimate that it must be held in trust, for the person receiving the income, in order to have the assessment made to him. But if held in trust, so that the income is to go to any one, the assessment shall be made to such person, in the town of which such person is an inhabitant. This seems to us purposely so expressed, that it might embrace cases like the present, where the person receiving the income, was never to receive the principal, which is not an uncommon case, and might very naturally have been anticipated by the framers of the statute.
This view might be fortified by the analogies of taxation, generally, falling, as it does, or is intended to, chiefly upon income. And if one person were entitled to the income, and another to the ultimate inheritance, or bequest of the principal, without its returning again into the mass of the estate, no one could question the probable purpose of the legislature, to make the assessment upon the present usufruct.
H. The other question made in the case is one of great importance, and possibly, upon mere comity, not altogether free from difficulty, if the tax upon the owner of state stocks be fairly capable of being viewed as any abridgement of the absolute rights of sovereignty of the state issuing the stock.
But, it seems to us, no such view is fairly maintainable. The sovereignty of a state certainly has no extraterritorial force, or existence. One state has no right, either as an independent foreign sovereignty, or as a member of the great republic of affiliated states,‘tinder the constitution, to demand the issue and sale¿of her public stocks in any other state. The United States government may be
This decision does not intimate any ground upon which a state could be deprived of the right to tax its inhabitants for income resulting from United States bank stocks, or even from their own stocks. But the case of Weston v. The City of Charleston, 2 Pet. 449, seems to go further, and to prohibit a tax upon income derivable from United States stocks. But this is placed upon the same ground as the specific tax upon the issues of the United States Bank. But it has no application to stocks issued by the states.
And the rule, as applied to the owners of United States stocks, is certainly not without serious ground for question, as the dissenting opinions of Messrs. J. J. Johnson and Thompson show. And when, if ever, the national stocks shall be swelled to the enormous extent of many European countries, so as to absorb the larger proportion of the national wealth, in personality, it would certainly demand serious consideration whether any such rule is maintainable, upon just and fair principles of reason and justice, but it seems to be settled as authority, so far as the U. S. supreme court is concerned. But it has always seemed to me that the opinions of J. J. Johnson and Thompson, and Ch. J. Marshall, in Mo Gullough v. Maryland, all which admit that United States stocks, considered as a source of income, may form the basis of personal taxation, contain the soundest view of the subject, and that it will finally prevail in that court.
Judgment affirmed.