Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ When we come to corporations formed and having their property and business elsewhere, the state must tax the stock held within the state if it is to tax anything, and we now are assuming the right to tax stock in foreign corporations to be conceded. If it does tax that stock, it may take into account that the property and franchise of the corporation are untaxed, on the same ground that it might do the same thing with a domestic corporation. ”

“ It is said that the state may not tax a man because by fiction his property is within the jurisdiction, and then discriminate against him upon the fact that it is without. The state does nothing of the kind. It adheres throughout to the fiction, if it be one, that the stock, the property of the plaintiff in error, is within the jurisdiction. There is no inconsistency in the state's recognizing at the same time that the property of the corporation, that which gives the plaintiff's stock its value, is taxed or untaxed, as the case may be. ”

“ If the argument went further and denied the right to tax on fiction at all, and therefore denied the right to tax foreign stocks, it would seem to us to have more logical force, although we are far from implying that it would be unanswerable, or that it can be regarded as open. Very likely such taxes can be justified without the help of fiction. ”