Tax collection

“ To improve resource mobilization, we will strive for a more efficient tax collection system to achieve a broader tax base. Improvement in the collection and utilization of tax resources shall be the focus of our efforts. ”

“ It has unhesitatingly brushed aside all legislation of the State impairing their obligation. When a tax has been authorized by law to meet them, it has compelled the officers of assessment to proceed and levy the tax, and the officers of collection to proceed and collect it, and apply the proceeds. ”

“ He must first find the cash for a liability for which he may not have provided. * * * The first interest of all of the people is, of course, that the Government continue to function, and to do this it must have the means of prompt collection of the necessary supplies to keep it going, that is, taxes. The method was, therefore, the determination by the Commissioner of the amount of tax due, its collection and suit to recover. * * * (T) he tax as assessed had to be paid and the taxpayer was left to his remedy in the courts. ”

“ There were received from the same sources 20,654,000 dollars in the years 1815, 1816 and 1817.
The preparatory measures necessary, in order to insure an immediate collection of internal taxes, whenever the laws imposing such taxes shall have been passed, are those on which I may speak with confidence. These consist simply in a previous organization of the machinery necessary for the collection of every species of internal taxes, and the assessment of a direct tax. [Pg 56] The proper selection of the numerous officers necessary for the collection always consumes several months. ”

“ The suggestion that in the collection of taxes there was no representation by petitioners to the taxpayers of the District might be pertinent were the system a self-executing tax structure under which the time for, and amount of, the payment due and the payee to whom it is to be made are designated by statute, so that the tax collector, serving as an automatic conduit, does nothing to cause collection of the tax. ”

“ On the 25th of that month, the legislature passed an act providing that from the interest payable out of the treasury on bonds of the State, whether funded or unfunded, there should be retained a tax equal in amount to fifty cents on the one hundred dollars of their market value, on the first day in April of each year, and made it the duty of every officer of the Commonwealth, charged with the collection of taxes, to deduct from the matured coupons which might be tendered to him in payment of taxes, or other dues to the State, such tax as was then or might thereafter be imposed on the bonds. ”

“ In all these cases, however, where there is jurisdiction to tax at all, equity will not grant an injunction to restrain the collection, even of an illegal tax, without the payment on the part of the taxpayer of the amount of a tax fairly and equitably due. ”

“ The process of collection is so tedious that unless some prompt remedy is devised by Congress, it is useless to regard such tax as a source of public revenue. The Exchequer bills being thus left dependent upon import duties for their redemption—no other demand existing for them—depreciated, and at one time were worth in market but twenty-five cents on the dollar, though the whole amount issued up to this time is only about one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, and the amount now in circulation can not by possibility exceed thirty thousand. ”

“ As the Supreme Court has indicated in this case, Act 142 of 1935 was one of a series of statutes adopted to prevent the setting aside of tax sales and titles based upon them for informalities and irregularities in the assessment and levy of taxes and the sale of property for delinquent taxes which had seriously impeded the effective collection of taxes and diminished the State's revenue. ”

“ As soon as the stock is subscribed, it is the duty of the county court, or corporate authorities, to levy a tax upon the taxable property, privileges, and persons liable by law to taxation within the county or corporation limits, sufficient to meet the installments of subscription as made, and the cost and expenses of collection, which tax shall be levide and collected like other taxes.' '1154. ”

“ Ease and cheapness of collection With, perhaps, the exception of certain licenses and stamp duties, which may be made almost to collect themselves but which can be relied on for only a trivial amount of revenue, a tax upon land values can, of all taxes, be most easily and cheaply collected. For land cannot be hidden or carried off ”

“ It will he his duty to see that the Agents of Collection do not collect more than the authorized taxes. Collection cannot be enforced on the tax-papers of the direct taxes until after they have been countersigned by him.
(5) It will be his duty to see that the produce in kind belonging to the revenues is realized to the best advantage of the Treasury. The Finance Committee will look to the best means of realizing its value. ”

“ III. The section, so far as it provides for the collection of a tax from interest due to citizens and residents of other States, impairs the obligation of the contracts between the railroad company and such citizens and residents of other States, and is therefore repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and void. It requires the officers of the debtor corporation to withhold a part of the interest stipulated to be paid to such citizens of other States, and to pay the same into the treasury of the State. ”

“ The adoption of the taxing act, as recommended by the commission, may therefore be taken, as appellant contends, to evidence a definite and specific legislative purpose to levy a new type of franchise tax, measured by corporate net income, including the tax exempt income from federal and state bonds. ”

“ Board of Assessors, 121 La. 116, 46 So. 122, where open accounts arising on the sale of merchandise were the subject of the assessment, the court said: 'There can be no serious question but that the legislature has provided that credits due upon open accounts arising out of business done in this state by nonresidents shall be taxed. . . . The state imposes this tax because of her need of the revenue to be derived from it; she extends to the business the protection of her laws, and seeks to make the business bear its just proportion of the burden of taxation. ”

“ The tax was not eo nomine on the notes, but was expressed to be on 'credits, money loaned, bills receivable,' etc., and its amount was ascertained by computing the sum of the face value of all the notes held by the company at the time of the assessment.
The purpose of the taxing law was said to be to lay the burden of taxation equally upon those who do business within the state. ”

“ And the amount of the taxation may be determined by the value of the property, or its use, or its capacity, or its productiveness. It may touch business in the almost infinite forms in which it is conducted, in professions, in commerce, in manufactures, and in transportation. Unless restrained by provisions of the Federal Constitution, the power of the State as to the mode, form, and extent of taxation is unlimited, where the subjects to which it applies are within her jurisdiction. ”

“ In all departments of the fiscal system, reforms have been inaugurated with a view to strengthening the national finances; the National Company of Collections, a joint stock company that was formed at the close of the war with Chile to organize a system of taxation and to take charge of the collections shows by its latest report that the receipts from taxes increased more than a hundred thousand sols from the last half-year of 1906 to the same semester of 1907, the collection from July to December, 1907, amounting to two million one hundred and fifty thousand sols. ”

“ The power of taxation, however vast in its character and searching in its extent, is necessarily limited to subjects within the jurisdiction of the State. These subjects are persons, property, and business. Whatever form taxation may assume, whether as duties, imposts, excises, or licenses, it must relate to one of these subjects. It is not possible to conceive of any other, though as applied to them, the taxation may be exercised in a great variety of ways. It may touch property in every shape, in its natural condition, in its manufactured form, and in its various transmutations. ”

“ And it may further be taken as established upon the testimony of Paterson, that the words direct taxes, as used in the Constitution, comprehended only capitation taxes, and taxes on land, and perhaps taxes on personal property by general valuation and assessment of the various descriptions possessed with the several States.
It follows necessarily that the power to tax without apportionment extends to all other objects. Taxes on other objects are included under the heads of taxes not direct, duties, imposts, and excises, and must be laid and collected by the rule of nuiformity. ”

“ Under section 6330 (c) (2) (B) , if a taxpayer received a notice of deficiency for a year in question and does not file a petition for redetermination of the deficiency with the Tax Court, in a collection hearing a taxpayer may not contest the existence or amount of his or her underlying tax liabilities. Nestor v. Commissioner, 118 T.C. 162, 165-166 (2002) . Rather, to contest the underlying tax liabilities in such a situation, the taxpayer would be required to pay the taxes assessed by respondent and to pursue a refund claim and a refund suit in Federal District Court. ”

“ The ultimate risk which the Court sought to avoid was the danger that gross income or gross receipts tax legislation, without apportionment, might be widely adopted if the door were once opened and, if adopted and applied to interstate sales by all or many of the states, would result generally in bringing such sales within the incidence of multiple state taxation of that nature. ”

“ This result cannot be perfectly attained by any device of legislation, but it can be approximated by taxation. A tax on all values has for its effect not only to impose a due share of the burden on the note holder, but to force those who have few or none of the notes to part with a share of their possessions to those who hold the notes in excess in order to obtain the means of satisfying the demands of the taxgatherer. ”

“ Every collector shall call at least once on the person taxed, or at his usual place of residence, and shall demand payment of the taxes charged on him. If any one shall refuse to pay the tax imposed on him, the collector shall levy the same by distress and sale of his property. ”

“ The same principles have been held applicable in determining the power of a State to impose the burdens of collecting use taxes upon interstate sales. Here, too, the Constitution requires 'some definite link, some minimum connection, between a state and the person, property or transaction it seeks to tax.' Miller Bros. ”

“ We have sustained and would now sustain the power of a state to tax, without discrimination, all property within its jurisdiction and to include in its assessment, or to assess separately, the value added by the property's assemblage into a going business, even if that business be solely interstate commerce. ”

“ It is not and cannot be denied that, under the broad and comprehensive taxing power conferred by the constitution on the national government, congress has the authority to tax incomes from whatsoever source arising, whether from real estate or personal property or otherwise. It is equally clear that congress, in the exercise of this authority, has the discretion to impose the tax upon incomes above a designated amount. The underlying and controlling question now presented is whether a tax on incomes received from land and personalty is a 'direct tax,' and subject to the rule of apportionment. ”

“ 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 first place, no attempt has been made by the Treasury to collect further taxes, upon the theory that the payment of the additional taxes creates further income, and the question of a tax upon a tax was not before the Circuit Court of Appeals, and has not been certified to this Court. We can settle questions of that sort when an attempt to impose a tax upon a tax is undertaken, but not now. ”

“ Concepts of real property are deeply rooted in state traditions, customs, habits, and laws. Local tax administration is geared to those concepts. To permit the states to tax, and yet to require them to alter their long-standing practice of assessments and collections, would create the kind of confusion and resultant hampering of local tax machinery, which we are certain Congress did not intend. ”

“ We have gone far in interpretation of the Constitution to allow a state to collect tax money, but in view of the delegation to the Federal Government of the power over commerce carried on in more than one state, we should preserve interstate commerce itself from taxes levied on it directly or on the unapportioned gross receipts of that commerce. ”

“ Second, public rates and taxes.' This, we think, is conclusive that, for the purpose of proof and payment out of the estate, a personal tax is a debt.' The court further held that a tax list or tax duplicate, duly certified by the county auditor, as required by statute, was prima facie evidence of the due levy of the taxes in it. ”

“ The duty of this court to examine taxing acts to see that the use of federal tax exempt subjects as a measure for taxes imposed in terms upon taxable subjects is not a cloak, under which the former in substance and effect are taxes, was never more imperative than now, when, by reason of increased and increasing public expenditures, states and municipalies are driven to search in every direction for additional sources of revenue. ”

“ This arrangement is but part of the general plan evident in the Internal Revenue Code of providing separate treatment for the income, profits, estate and gift taxes, as distinct from the miscellaneous taxes and the excise, import and temporary taxes. We would be doing unwarranted violence to this clear demarcation were we to read the word 'overpayment' so as to place certain types of income tax refund claims within the scope of § 3313, a section that has always been divorced from the income tax portion of the revenue laws. ”