Several sections in Chapter 105 were amended in the 1991 and 1992 sessions of the General Assembly. None of the amendments affect the resolution of the issues presented in this case.
All references are to the most recent version of the statutes.
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. There is no rule that the state cannot look behind the present net value of different stocks. While Kidd and Klein involved challenges to taxes based upon the Fourteenth Amendment, which makes those cases distinguishable from the challenge before us based on the Commerce Clause, they are nevertheless persuasive authority for the proposition that a state may tax the shares of certain corporations, such as a corporation doing business outside North Carolina, and with respect to other corporations, such as corporations operating exclusively in the state, tax the corporation itself, whether it be a property tax or an income tax. The plaintiffs in Darnell, however, did not establish that their corporations paid Indiana property taxes and the Supreme Court limited its holding to situations where the corporation in question paid no property tax in Indiana. The aspects of the West Virginia taxing scheme the Court looked to were that West Virginia did not reduce the manufacturing tax when the goods were sold outside West Virginia and that the manufacturing tax was decreased when part of the manufacturing occurred outside the state.