Summary

Railway Express Agency v. Virginia…

To ascribe a going-concern value of over three million dollars to tangible property of $129.279 is on its face an extreme attribution. To base the value on appellant's gross revenues is to assume that every dollar of annual intake adds a dollar of intangible value to the company's assets regardless of how much it cost in labor, interest and other expense, including other taxes, to produce it. On the other hand, as a forthright tax on gross receipts, the tax involves no irrational or impractical assumption.
Source: Wikisource

Railway Express Agency v. Virginia…

The Virginia court, in this and earlier cases, considered that gross earnings measure the value of a good-will or going-concern element which is a separate intangible property of the company.
Of course, we have held, and it is but common sense to hold, that a physical asset may fluctuate in value according to the income it can be made to produce. A live horse is worth more than a dead one, though the physical object may be the same, and a smoothgoing automobile is worth more than an unassembled collection of all its parts.
Source: Wikisource

Railway Express Agency v. Virginia…

The fact that its measure is gross revenue is consistent with a tax on the privilege of doing a volume of business which would yield that revenue, just as the Legislature indicated. But we have declined to regard mere gross receipts as a sound measure of going-concern value in a practical world of commerce, where values depend on profitableness of a business, not merely its volume.
Source: Wikisource

Get perspective with Kwize: daily news enlightened by great literature