Charles Evans Whittaker

“ I believe that these considerations require the conclusion that the District Court and the Court of Appeals were right in holding that the contracts in question conveyed full beneficial title-all elements of property and incidents of ownership-in the materials to the Government.
Is this a general ad valorem tax imposed on the materials? The majority holds, we think erroneously, that it is not. Under the Constitution of the State of Michigan [10] only two general methods of taxation by the State or its subdivisions are authorized, namely, (1) ad valorem taxes, and (2) excise or privilege taxes. ”

“ Allegheny County, 322 U.S. 174, 64 S.Ct. 908, where it was said:
'While personal liability for the (personal property) tax may be and sometimes is imposed, the power to tax is predicated upon jurisdiction of the property, not upon jurisdiction of the person of the owner, which often is lacking without impairment of the power to tax. In both theory and practice the property is the subject of the tax and stands as security for its payment. * * * But in all of these cases [13] what we have denied is immunity for the contractor's own property, profits, or purchases. ”

“ As to petitioners' 'lien' contention, we must ask ourselves: A lien as security for what? Admittedly Murray was not indebted, nor to become indebted, to the Government under the subcontracts and, hence, there was and would be no debt to secure. Nor can it be said that the vesting of title to the materials in the Government was in any way to secure repayment of the partial payments made by the Government to Murray, because those partial payments were not to be repaid to the Government, but were expressly made by the Government in payment of the purchase price for the materials. ”