Owen J. Roberts

“ There is a widespread belief that the existing unemployment is the result, in large part, of the gross inequality in the distribution of wealth and income which giant corporations have fostered; that by the control which the few have exerted through giant corporations individual initiative and effort are being paralyzed, creative power impaired and human happiness lessened; that the true prosperity of our past came not from big business, but through the courage, the energy, and the resourcefulness of small men ”

“ The system has had its origin in the belief that the social utility or inutility of one group is less or greater than that of others, and that the choice of subjects to be taxed should be adjusted to social gains and losses. Courts would be lacking in candor if they were not to concede the presence of such a motive behind this chain store legislation. But a purpose to bear more heavily on one class than another will not avail without more to condemn a tax as void. ”

“ The addition of a store to an existing chain is a privilege, and an increase of the tax on all the stores for the privilege of expanding the chain cannot be condemned as arbitrary; but an increase in the levy, not only on a new store, but on all the old stores, consequent upon the mere physical fact that the new one lies a few feet over a county line, finds no foundation in reason or in any fact of business experience. ”

“ The mere fact that the taxpayer is a corporation does not, of course, exclude it from the protection afforded by the equality clause. Corporations and individuals, aliens and citizens, are for most purposes in the same class. Ordinarily, they have the same civil rights; are entitled to the same remedies; are subject to the same police regulations; and are also subject to the same tax laws. Where such is the case, the corporation taxpayer is entitled, like the individual, to the protection of the equality clause against discrimination. ”

“ The citizens of the state, considering themselves vitally interested in this seemingly unequal struggle, have undertaken to aid the individual retailers by subjecting the owners of multiple stores to the handicap of higher license fees. They may have done so merely in order to preserve competition. But their purpose may have been a broader and deeper one. They may have believed that the chain store, by furthering the concentration of wealth and of power and by promoting absentee ownership, is thwarting American ideals; that it is making impossible equality of opportunity ”

“ All who have gone beyond a single county do business in many more, or else in many states. One can imagine extreme cases, to be sure, where county lines may be crossed and the business remain local in substance, if not in form. The store in the new county may be next to the boundary line that separates from the old. So too the chain that is national in scope may have its Florida stores in one county and one only, in which event it is local quoad its activities in Florida, whatever it may be beyond. Lawmakers are not required to legislate with an eye to exceptional conditions. ”

“ Whenever the discrimination is for a permitted purpose-as when a state, having concluded that activity by corporations should be curbed, seeks to favor businesses conducted by individuals-the corporate character of the owner presents a difference in ownership which may be made the sole basis of classification in taxation, as in regulation. ”

“ In a state with a population thus distributed, the boundaries of the county will have an approximate correspondence with the area of local business. When a chain goes beyond the county, beyond the traditional boundaries of local government, it puts the locality behind it, and elects to play for larger stakes.
Every new community is potentially a new center of economic opportunity. There is then a hazard of new adventures, a tapping of new sources of dominance and profit. At once with this advance, the tax amounts into higher brackets, but does not mount again. ”

“ They show that size alone gives to giant corporations a social significance not attached ordinarily to smaller units of private enterprise. Through size, corporations, once merely an efficient tool employed by individuals in the conduct of private business have become an institution-an institution which has brought such concentration of economic power that so-called private corporations are sometimes able to dominate the state. ”

“ A corporation exists, not of natural right, but only by license of law, and the law, if we look at the matter in good conscience, is responsible for what it creates. * * * I would urge, therefore, the imperative obligation of public policy and of public honesty we are under to effect such changes in the law of the State as will henceforth effectually prevent the abuse of the privilege of incorporation which has in recent years brought so much discredit upon our State. ”

“ Businesses may become as harmful to the community by excessive size, as by monopoly or the commonly recognized restraints of trade. If the state should conclude that bigness in retail merchandising as manifested in corporate chain stores menaces the public welfare, it might prohibit the excessive size or extent of that business as it prohibits excessive size or weight in motor trucks or excessive height in the buildings of a city. ”

“ Systems of taxation are not framed, nor is it possible to frame them, with perfect distribution of benefit and burden. Their authors must be satisfied with a rough and ready form of justice. This is true in special measure while the workings of a novel method are untested by a rich experience. There must be advance by trial and error. Taxes upon chain stores are not exempt from these infirmities. To what extent there is a change of form and spirit when a business ceases to be local is not a question of law. ”

“ The difference in the amount of tax laid upon the operator of a given number of stores in a single county and another conducting the same number in two or more counties is challenged as an unconstitutional discrimination. The imposition of a tax of $3 per $1,000 on retail merchants, not only as respects the stock actually contained in their stores, but also on goods in warehouse intended for sale in such stores, is attacked as discriminatory, for the reason that under another statute wholesale merchants are taxed only $1.50 per $1,000 of merchandise carried in their stores or warehouses. ”

“ The typical business corporation of the last century, owned by a small group of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size by their personal wealth, is being supplanted by huge concerns in which the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and the property of tens or hundreds of thousands of investors are subjected, through the corporate mechanism, to the control of a few men. ”

“ The principle upon which those cases rest is that where a statute lays a tax upon property ad valorem at an even and equal rate, discrimination may result from the fact that the assessing officials systematically and intentionally value some property subject to the tax at a proportion of its true value different from that fixed with respect to other like property. They do not support the appellants' contention that, where the taxing officials fail and neglect to exact the tax from some persons alleged to owe it, all others who are subject to the levy are in virtue of such omission exempt. ”

“ Clear and hostile discriminations against particular persons and classes especially such as are of an unusual character, unknown to the practice of our governments, may be obnoxious to the Constitution, but, in view of the imposition of taxes on the operation of filing stations by other acts, pursuant to the Legislature's power of classification, we cannot declare their exemption from the tax laid by the Chain Store Act offensive to the guaranties of the Fourteenth Amendment. ”

“ No other justification of the discrimination in license fees need be shown; since the very purpose of the legislation is to create inequality and thereby to discourage the establishment, or the maintenance, of corporate chain stores; since that purpose is one for which the power of taxation may be exerted; since higher license fees is an appropriate means of discouragement; and corporations have not the inherent right to engage in intrastate commerce. ”

“ There is no gain to the people of the country, but this State loses a revenue which is perfectly legitimate. We doubt not that much of the adverse criticism outside of the State which was directed against New Jersey and its corporation laws prior to 1913 was due as much to the desire to divert the organization of corporations to other States as it was to prevent evils which might have arisen, and New Jersey fell for the criticism. ”

“ But, as no such person has intervened in the cause, we have no occasion to inquire whether the discrimination complained of would be fatal as applied to natural persons. The plaintiffs can succeed only if the discrimination is unconstitutional as applied to them; that is, as applied to corporations. One who would strike down a statute must show not only that he is affected by it, but that as applied to him it exceeds the power of the state. ”

“ Chain stores do not sell at wholesale. What they store, if they warehouse any goods in the state of Florida is for the purpose of retail sale at their shops. On the other hand, goods held by a wholesaler are stored for sale to retail establishments to be resold by the latter. What has been said with respect to difference in methods and operation of the two kinds of warehouses applies in this instance. The diverse purposes of the storage and difference in the nature of the business conducted are sufficient to justify a different classification of the two sorts of warehouses for taxation. ”

“ Even where the business is kept within a single county, there is no certainty that a chain of thirty stores will so differ from one of fifty either in its method of organization or in the proportionate returns that the first should pay a tax at one rate for every store, and the second at another. ”

“ Their search is for probabilities and tendencies of general validity, and, these being ascertained, they may frame their rule accordingly. They are not required to legislate with an eye to forms of growth beyond the limits of their own state. In laying a tax upon a Florida chain their concern is with those activities that have social and economic consequences for Florida and her people. The question for them, and so for us, is not how a business might be expected to develop if its forms and lines of growth were to be predicted in the abstract without reference to experience. ”

“ There is no more reason for adopting the county line as the measure of the tax than there would be for taking ward lines in cities, or arbitrary lines drawn through the state regardless of county boundaries. It is suggested that the license fee for extending operations into a great and populous city, or for doing business upon crowded business streets, should be greater than for the same privilege in a village or a sparsely settled suburb. ”

“ There are not progressive increases when a business, after moving into one county, moves on again to others. The second county once attained, the rate is not affected though many more are added. The chain has made its choice, and for this it pays but once. It has put its local character away, and found alignment in another class. It is on the way to becoming an organization of another order, to becoming sectional or national. There is confirmation of this tendency in the facts stated in the bill as to the stores operated by the complainants and by those allowed to intervene. ”

“ Moreover, since the authority to operate many stores, or to operate in two or more counties, is certainly a broader privilege than to operate only one store, or in only one county, there is in this record no basis for a finding that it is unreasonable to make the charge higher for the greater privilege. ”

“ The state might justify progressively higher license fees for corporations of larger size, or a more extended field of operation, on the oft-asserted ground that such concerns are more efficient than smaller units, and hence that they can, and should, contribute more to the public revenues. But the state need not rest the difference in tax rates on a ground so debatable as the assertion that efficiency increases with size. ”

“ A tax greater than that exacted for a single store is fixed for each store in excess of one, but not exceeding fifteen, owned or operated by the same person or corporation. The fee for each store is stepped up in amount as the number constituting the chain reaches certain specified limits. This graduated scale applies to stores all of which are within a single county; but, if the same number of stores is located in more than one county, the license fee for each is materially increased. ”

“ But it does not follow that, because the independently owned stores are overcoming through co-operation the advantages once possessed by chain stores, there is no taxable difference between the corporate chain and the single store. The state's power to apply discriminatory taxation as a means of preventing domination of intrastate commerce by capitalistic corporations is not conditioned upon the existence of economic need. It flows from the broader right of Americans to preserve, and to establish from time to time. ”

“ The difference in power between corporations and natural persons is ample basis for placing them in different, classes. Even as between natural persons, where the equality clause applies rigidly, differences in size furnish an adequate basis for discrimination in a tax rate. ”