Tar (tax)

“ The tax on each such message is to be computed upon the amount of the regular established charge for the transmission of similar messages for ordinary customers, calculated at the regular fixed rate provided in the tariffs of the transmitting carrier. The questions as to whether such messages relate to the operation of the business of a common carrier and whether they are 'on line' or 'off line' are immaterial. ”

“ But a tax is not a direct burden merely because it is laid upon an indispensable instrumentality of such commerce, or because it arises exclusively from transactions in interstate commerce. Thus, a tax is valid although imposed upon property used exclusively in interstate commerce, Transportation Co. ”

“ In general usage, and according to the terminology of political economy, a direct tax is one which is levied upon the person who is to pay it, or upon his land or personalty, or his business or income, as the case may be. An indirect tax is one assessed upon the manufacturer or dealer in the particular commodity, and paid by him, but which really falls upon the consumer, since it is added to the market price of the commodity which he must pay. ”

“ If such a tax is laid, and the receipts taxed are those derived from transporting goods and passengers in the way of interstate or foreign commerce, no matter when the tax is exacted, whether at the time of realizing the receipts, or at the end of every six months or a year, it is an exaction aimed at the commerce itself, and is a burden upon it, and seriously affects it. ”

“ If it is full rate, the tax is one cent, and if less than full rate, one-half cent. Clearly if a fixed tax for every two thousand pounds of freight carried is a tax on the freight, or for every measured ton of a vessel a tax on tonnage, or for every passenger carried a tax on the passenger, or for the sale of goods a tax on the goods, this must be a tax on the messages. As such, so far as it operates on private messages sent out of the State, it is a regulation of foreign and inter-state commerce and beyond the power of the State. ”

“ Attention was called during the argument to the fact that the railroad company is authorized, by the same section which imposes the tax, to deduct and withhold from all payments on account of any interest or coupons and dividends, due and payable as aforesaid, the tax of 5 per centum, and that the payment of the amount of the tax so deducted from the interest or coupons or dividends, and certified by the president or treasurer of the company, is made a discharge to the company for the amount of the tax so paid, deducted, and withheld, except where the company may have otherwise contracted. ”

“ When the tax upon a commodity is so moderate as not to encourage smuggling, the merchant who deals in it, though he advances, does not properly pay the tax, as he gets it back in the price of the commodity. The tax is finally paid by the last purchaser or consumer. ”

“ It is argued, however, that the present tax is not an impost within the meaning of the Import-Export Clause. The tax is measured by the gross receipts of retail sales and is levied on retailers 'For the privilege of selling tangible personal property at retail.' Cal.Stats.1935, p. 1253. The retailers are authorized to collect the tax from the consumers. ”

“ If importers brought in great quantities of unprotected goods and then organized a campaign for protection, manufacturers in anticipation of taxes piled up huge stocks; 40 millions of gallons of distilled spirits and nearly 80 millions of cigars were made and stored in anticipation of the tax of 1864. When it was seen that matches were to be taxed, stocks were so piled up that the first year the government collected only a small proportion of its estimate. After the stock was exhausted the return from the tax on matches increased 216 per cent in five months ”

“ Yet it is obvious that taxes imposed upon property or franchises employed in interstate commerce must be paid from the net returns of such commerce, and diminish them in the same sense that they are diminished by a tax imposed upon the net returns themselves. ”

“ The tax to describe it according to its essential nature, is an excise upon domestice sale or storage, designed to affect the use of the products, a tax imposed at the time of inspection, the inspector acting also as tax gatherer, inspection and tax payment required but once, and that, ordinarily, from the dealer at the time of the first domestic sale, or during storage preliminary to such sale. ”

“ It is not denied that net earnings of such corporations are taxable by State authority without any inquiry after their sources, and it is difficult to state any well-founded distinction between the lawfulness of a tax upon them and that of a tax upon gross receipts, or between the effects they work upon commerce, except perhaps in degree. They may both come from charges made for transporting freight or passengers between the States, or out of exactions from the freight itself. Net earnings are a part of the gross receipts. ”

“ Apart from these more fundamental considerations which we think are of controlling force in the application of the commerce clause, we can find no adequate basis for distinguishing the present tax laid on the sale or purchase of goods upon their arrival at destination at the end of an interstate journey from the tax which may be laid in like fashion on the property itself. ”

“ The colonel says that in the first place there has been a tax on every ship that comes in and goes out. There has been a heavy tax on all articles of impost and a special tax on all articles not enumerated in the tariff. In addition to that, an additional tax of ten per cent. on the bill was added. Each hackman who plied between the port and the town of Ponce had to pay a tax of eight dollars a month. No person could write a letter to an official without first going to the collector and purchasing a certain kind of official paper, for which he must pay fifty cents to one dollar a sheet. ”

“ Section 7 provides that the tax imposed shall be paid by the seller and shall be collected either by affixing stamps or by such other method as may be prescribed by the published regulations of the Secretary of the Treasury.
Section 10 provides a penalty for any person who shall fail to evidence the contract of sale he makes by memorandum or to keep the record of it, or to pay the tax as provided in sections 4 and 5, with a penalty of 50 per cent. ”

“ Attempts more or less successful have been made at various times and at different points to conceal from the Public the impulses really behind the provisions of this tariff, and even the amount and the mode of the incidence of its taxes; many of the most protectionist taxes have been complex, combining upon the same article specific and advalorem rates, as for instance, upon blankets "50 cents per pound and 35% advalorem," so that it was difficult or rather impossible for the common reader or buyer to ascertain how much the tariff-tax really was ”

“ Such must be the operation of all taxes on sales or exchanges. The owner in reality pays it, whether laid on the vender or purchaser. It matters not in the sale of a tract of land, or any other article, if a tax be imposed on the sale, whether it be paid by him who sells or him who buys, the amount must, in both cases, be deducted from the price. ”

“ In the case before us the stamp is distinctly for the purpose of revenue, and not by way of compensation for services rendered, so that the question is whether revenue can be collected from exports by changing the form of the tax from a tax on the article exported to a tax on the bill of lading which evidences the export. ”

“ That every person, firm, corporation, or company carrying on or doing the business of refining petroleum, or refining sugar, or owning or controlling any pipe line for transporting oil or other products, whose gross annual receipts exceed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, shall be subject to pay annually a special excise tax equivalent to one quarter of one per centum on the gross amount of all receipts of such persons, firms, corporations, and companies in their respective business in excess of said sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. ”

“ It is those specific receipts, or the amount thereof, (which is the same thing,) for which the company is called upon to pay the tax. They are taxed, not only because they are money or its value, but because they were received for transportation. ”

“ Taxes on particular commodities fall on the consumer. A tax on any one commodity, whether laid on its production, its importation, its carriage from place to place, or its sale, and whether the tax be a fixed sum of money for a given quantity of the commodity, or an ad valorem duty, will, as a general rule, raise the value and price of the commodity by at least the amount of the tax. ”

“ It is the one where the burden of the tax necessarily will fall equally on both classes of trade. To choose the tax of the state of origin presents at least some possibilities that the burden it imposes on its local trade, with which the interstate traffic does not compete, at any rate directly, will be heavier than that placed by the consuming state on its loc l business of the same character.'↑ Credit allowed for taxes paid elsewhere, see Henneford v. ”

“ Section 2845 requires the county board, when granting the franchise, to fix the license tax within specified limits and a rate of toll, which must not raise annually an income exceeding 15 per cent of base. Section 2846 declares that the license tax and the rate of toll so fixed must not be diminished unless receipts are disproportionate to base. Thus plainly the commands are that at first the tolls must be fixed, but not to produce income above the 15 per cent specified, and that the tolls so fixed shall not be diminished unless yield is disproportionate to the defined base. ”

“ The sole object of the tariff is to tax the produce of foreign industry, with the view of promoting American industry. The tax is exclusively levelled at foreign industry. That is the avowed and the direct purpose of the tariff. If it subjects any part of American industry to burdens, that is an effect not intended, but is altogether incidental, and perfectly voluntary. ”

“ The Corporation Tax mentioned in the final paragraph of the President’s statement is one imposed by an incongruous section of the Tariff Act, designed for revenue additional to the expected yield of import duties. It exacts one per cent. of the net earnings in excess of $5000 of all corporations, joint stock companies, and associations organized for profit and having a capital stock represented by shares, and all insurance companies. Foreign corporations are liable for the tax to the extent of their business in the United States. ”

“ Taxes imposed directly on the consumers of particular commodities, such as a house-tax, or the tax in this country on horses and carriages, might be called taxes on commodities, but are not; the phrase being, by custom, confined to indirect taxes those which are advanced by one person, to be, as is expected and intended, reimbursed by another. Taxes on commodities are either on production within the country, or on importation into it, or on conveyance or sale within it ”

“ If the State can exact a license tax from one class of traders for the sale of goods which are the growth, product, or manufacture of other States, it can exact the license from all traders in such goods, and the amount of the tax will rest in its discretion. ”

“ To-day the average tax on dutiable goods imported into the United States is nearer 50 per cent than 20. Instead of reciprocity with Canada we have had for fifty years in many cases prohibitive protection. ”

“ Assuming that he gave the customer the whole benefit of the reduction, 10 shillings a ton, when reduced to the price in yards, represents, as Mr. Acworth observes, ' an amount too fractional to be represented in English currency.'
There is the same difficulty in determining the ultimate incidence of cost of transport as in ascertaining the incidence of taxation on commodities. A priori speculations on the subject are apt to be fruitless and delusive. A minute study of the economic conditions at the time when a tax is levied or the rate is charged is necessary. ”

“ We proceed, therefore, to the second objection to the act, that it imposes taxes upon property beyond the jurisdiction of the State. If such be the fact the tax to that extent is invalid, for the power of taxation of every State is necessarily confined to subjects within its jurisdiction. The objection of the appellant is directed principally to the tax imposed by the fourth section of the act, and assumes that the tax must be considered as laid upon the shares as representing the separate property of the individual stockholders, or as representing the property of the corporation. ”

“ As we construe the language of the fourth section, the tax is neither imposed upon the shares of the individual stockholders nor upon the property of the corporation, but is a tax upon the corporation itself, measured by a percentage upon the cash value of a certain proportional part of the shares of its capital stock; a rule which, though an arbitrary one, is approximately just, at any rate is one which the legislature of Delaware was at liberty to adopt. ”

“ The gross receipts of most roads are made up chiefly of earnings from the carrying of freight and passengers, and a tax on gross receipts would simply create an additional burden to be borne by the passenger and freight traffic. ”

“ As some of the outstanding shares are represented by plaintiff's interstate business, the application of the rate to all the shares, or to a number greater than the total outstanding, necessarily amounts to a tax and direct burden upon all the property and business including the interstate commerce of the plaintiff. ”