James Clark McReynolds

“ If the Legislature may prohibit the sale of confessedly innocent articles in order to insure the effective prohibition of others, I see no reason why it may not spread a tax over a period in advance of its enactment sufficiently long to insure that the tax will not be evaded by anticipating the passage of the act. ”

“ The problem of preventing loss of revenue by transactions intervening between the date when legislation is introduced and its final enactment is not a new one; nor it is one peculiar to the gift tax. Other nations have met it by a method similar to that which the Court holds to be denied to Congress. England long ago adopted the practice of making customs and excise duties retroactive to the beginning of the fiscal year or to the date when the government's resolutions were agreed to by the House of Commons sitting as a committee of ways and means. ”

“ The need of the government for revenue has hitherto been deemed a sufficient justification for making a tax measure retroactive whenever the imposition seemed consonant with justice and the conditions were not such as would ordinarily involve hardship. On this broad ground rest and cases in which a special assessment upon real estate has been upheld, although the benefit resulting from the improvement had been enjoyed and the cost thereof had been paid prior to any legislation attempting to authorize the assessment. ”

“ Each of the fifteen income tax acts adopted from time to time during that last 67 years has been retroactive, in that it applied to income earned, prior to the passage of the act, during the calendar year. ”

“ Tested by the standard of reasonableness commonly adopted by man-use and wont-that action appears to be reasonable. Tested by a still higher standard to which all Americans must bow-long-continued practice of Congress repeatedly sanctioned by this Court after full argument-its validity would have seemed unquestionable, but for views recently expressed. No other standard has been suggested.
For more than half a century it has been settled that a law of Congress imposing a tax may be retroactive in its operation. ”

“ In the Sinking Fund Cases, 99 U.S. 700, 718, 25 L. Ed. 496, this Court said with respect to an act of Congress:
'Every possible presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt. One branch of the government cannot encroach on the domain of another without danger. The safety of our institutions depends in no small degree on a strict observance of this salutary rule.'
The presumption in favor of the validity of an act of Congress, often adverted to, has been acted upon as recently as United States v. ”

“ The taxpayer may justly demand to know when and how he becomes liable for taxes-he cannot foresee and ought not to be required to guess the outcome of pending measures. The future of every bill while before Congress is necessarily uncertain. ”

“ Then it holds the act void as applied to a gift made during the ten-day period between the submission of the Conference Report to Congress and the approval of the act by the President. It holds the act void because the action of the lawmaking body is, in its opinion, unreasonable. ”

“ The validity of the Act of February 24, 1919, c. 18, title 3, 40 Stat. 1057, 1088 (Comp. St. § 6336 7/16 a et seq.) , taxing excess profits earned during the calendar year 1918, has never been questioned. Compare Willcuts v. Milton Dairy Co., 275 U.S. 215, 48 S.C.t. 71, 72 L. Ed. 247; Blair v. Oesterlein Machinery Co., 275 U.S. 220, 48 S.C.t. 87, 72 L. Ed. 249; Porto Rico Coal Co. v. Edwards (D. C.) 275 F. 104; National Paper & Type Co. v. Edwards (D. C.) 292 F. 633. The Munition Manufacturer's Tax, imposed by the Act of September 8, 1916, c. ”