Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/276/245/
Timestamp: 2018-02-21 01:42:31
Document Index: 376576099

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 266', '§ 380', '§ 238', '§ 345', 'art 2', '§ 3']

INTERSTATE BUSSES CORPORATION v. BLODGETT, Tax Commissioner of Connecticut, et al. | LII / Legal Information Institute
276 U.S. 245 (48 S.Ct. 230, 72 L.Ed. 551)
Argued: Jan. 19, 20, 1928.
The appellant, complainant below, is a Connecticut corporation engaged in the transportation of passengers in motor busses, exclusively in interstate commerce, between Connecticut and points in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The present suit was brought in the district court for Connecticut to restrain appellees, tax officials of the state, from levying a tax on appellant under a Connecticut statute, Pub. Acts Conn. 1925, c. 254, on the ground that the tax is a unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. Application to a court of three judges for an interlocutory injunction under Judicial Code, § 266 (28 USCA § 380), was denied, 19 F.(2d) 256, and on final hearing the court dismissed the bill on the merits. The application for the preliminary injunction having been pressed to a determination before the court of three judges, the case is properly here on direct appeal from the final decree of that court. Judicial Code, §§ 238, 266 (28 USCA §§ 345, 380); Smith v. Wilson, 273 U. S. 388, 47 S. Ct. 385, 71 L. Ed. 699; Clark v. Poor, 274 U.S. 554, 47 S.Ct. 702, 71 L.Ed. 1199.
Appellant objects to the tax as an infringement of the paramount power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, or at least as a discrimination against that commerce. It is not denied that a state may impose a registration or license fee on those using motor vehicles in the state, although engaged in interstate commerce, or that the state may impose a reasonable charge for the use of its highways by motor vehicles so employed, Hendrick v. Maryland, 235 U. S. 610, 35 S. Ct. 140, 59 L. Ed. 385; Kane v. New Jersey, 242 U. S. 160, 37 S. Ct. 30, 61 L. Ed. 222; Clark v. Poor, supra, and there is no evidence that the tax here is in itself an unreasonable charge for the privilege. But it is said that the particular scheme of taxation adopted by Connecticut imposes this tax in addition to statutory charges already made for the use of the highways in interstate commerce, and both in purpose and in effect discriminates against appellant and in favor of those operating motor vehicles in intrastate commerce.
The two statutes are complementary in the sense that, while both levy a tax on those engaged in carrying passengers for hire over state highways in motor vehicles, to be expended for highway maintenance, one affects only interstate, and the other only intrastate, commerce. Appellant plainly does not establish discrimination by showing merely that the two statutes are different in form or adopt a different measure or method of assessment, or that it is subject to three kinds of taxes while intrastate carriers are subject only to two or to one. We cannot say from a mere inspection of the statutes that the mileage tax is a substantially greater burden on appellant's interstate business than is its correlative, the gross receipts tax, on comparable intrastate businesses. To gain the relief for which it prays, appellant is under the necessity of showing that in actual practice the tax of which it complains falls with disproportionate economic weight on it. General American Tank Car Corp. v. Day, 270 U. S. 367, 46 S. Ct. 234, 70 L. Ed. 635; Hendrick v. Maryland, supra; Interstate Busses Corp. v. Holyoke Street Ry., 273 U. S. 45, 51, 47 S. Ct. 298, 71 L. Ed. 530. The record does not show that it made any attempt to do so.
It is further objected that the provision of the state statute, part 2, § 3, authorizing the suspension of registration as a remedy for the nonpayment of the mileage tax, is invalid in any case, since payment of even a lawful tax may not be enforced by the exclusion of the taxpayer from interstate commerce. Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, 125 U. S. 530, 8 S. Ct. 961, 31 L. Ed. 790; St. Louis Southwestern R. R. v. Arkansas, 235 U. S. 350, 35 S. Ct. 99, 59 L. Ed. 265. And it is not denied that appellees have threatened to invoke section 3 against appellant. But we need not consider here whether the principle relied on goes so far as to prevent a state from excluding from its highways a motor carrier which refuses to pay a charge for their use. Compare Hendrick v. Maryland, supra; Kane v. New Jersey, supra; Clark v. Poor, supra. Here the relief sought presupposes that the tax is unconstitutional. That point being determined against appellant, we shall not assume that it will persist in its refusal to pay the tax.