Case Name: Llewellyn King v. W.H. Forst, State Tax Commissioner
Court: Supreme Court of Virginia
Jurisdiction: Virginia
Decision Date: 1990-04-20
Citations: 239 Va. 557
Docket Number: Record No. 890562
Parties: Llewellyn King v. W.H. Forst, State Tax Commissioner
Judges: 
Reporter: Virginia Reports
Volume: 239
Pages: 557–565

Head Matter:
Llewellyn King v. W.H. Forst, State Tax Commissioner
Record No. 890562
April 20, 1990
Present: All the Justices
Stephen Leventhal (Robert J. Zweibel; Martin R. Mann, on briefs), for appellant.
James G. Council, Assistant Attorney General (Mary Sue Terry, Attorney General; Walter A. McFarlane, Deputy Attorney General; Barbara M. Rose, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Marion S. Cooper, Assistant Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Opinion:
JUSTICE RUSSELL
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The dispositive question in this appeal is whether the District of Columbia's tax on the net income of unincorporated businesses, D.C. Code Ann. § 47-1808.1, et seq. (1981), (the UB tax) is an income tax or a franchise tax. If it is an income tax, a Virginia resident, who does business in the District of Columbia and pays the tax there, is entitled to credit against his Virginia income taxes for the amount paid to the District of Columbia. Va. Code § 58.1-332 (formerly Code § 58-151.015). If we decide, instead, that the District of Columbia's UB tax is a franchise tax, a Virginia taxpayer is not entitled to the credit provided by Code § 58.1-332.
The facts are undisputed. Llewellyn King, a resident of Virginia, operates an unincorporated printing business in the District of Columbia as a sole proprietor. For the 1983 tax year, Mr. King was assessed $19,211 in District of Columbia UB taxes. After paying the taxes, he claimed a credit against his 1983 Virginia individual income tax, under then Code § 58-151.015, for the amount paid to the District of Columbia.
The State Tax Commissioner ruled that the UB tax was a franchise tax, not an income tax, and disallowed the credit. Mr. King paid his Virginia taxes under protest and filed this action in the court below against the State Tax Commissioner, contending that the UB tax was an income tax and seeking judgment for the credit allowed in such cases by Virginia law. The trial court entered summary judgment in the Commissioner's favor, ruling that the UB tax was a franchise tax. We awarded the taxpayer an appeal.
There is no dispute with respect to the Virginia law; the parties agree that under our statute, the trial court's decision is correct if the UB tax is a franchise tax, but must be reversed if the UB tax is an income tax. We are concerned, therefore, solely with the interpretation to be given to a District of Columbia statute.
The District of Columbia has a structure of taxation that includes an income tax on resident individuals, D.C. Code Ann. § 47-1806.3, an income tax on corporations, § 47-1807.2, an income tax on estates and trusts, § 47-1809.1, and the UB tax in question here, § 47-1808.1, et seq. All those statutes were originally enacted by Congress, when it was the District's sole legislative body.
In 1973, the Congress enacted the District of Columbia "Home Rule" Act, Pub. L. No. 93-198, 87 Stat. 774 (1973), which established the District of Columbia Council as the District's legislative body for most purposes. The Council, in 1975, enacted an amendment to the existing UB tax, D.C. Code Ann. § 47-1574, which purported to remove an exemption which had previously exempted professionals and personal service businesses from the UB tax. Insofar as that amendment subjected nonresident professionals to the UB tax, it ran afoul of a provision in the "Home Rule" Act which expressly prohibited the Council from imposing a "commuter tax," defined as "any tax on the whole or any portion of the personal income . of any individual not a resident of the District. . . ." D.C. Code Ann. § l-147(a)(5) (1978 Supp.).
In 1977, Richard A. Bishop, a resident of Virginia practicing law in the District of Columbia, filed a suit in the Superior Court of the District for a refund of UB taxes paid under protest. His claim was based upon the contention that the UB tax was, and had always been, an income tax, that the Council, in removing the former exemption for professionals, had imposed an income tax upon him, and that the restrictions in the "Home Rule" act rendered the imposition of an income tax on nonresidents unlawful. The District of Columbia government defended the suit on the ground that the UB tax was a franchise tax because it was actually imposed upon the privilege of doing business in the District, even though it was measured by the taxpayer's net income.
From an adverse ruling by the Superior Court, the taxpayer appealed to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the highest court of that jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals held, in Bishop v. District of Columbia, 401 A.2d 955 (D.C. 1979), aff'd en banc, 411 A.2d 997 (D.C. 1980), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 966 (1980), that the UB tax here under consideration was an income tax, not a franchise tax. Id. at 960. In so holding, the Bishop court considered, and expressly rejected, the arguments advanced by the State Tax Commissioner in the present case: (1) that the label given the UB tax by Congress is an important consideration, and (2) that a tax measured by net income is not necessarily an income tax. With respect to the Commissioner's first argument, the Bishop court said, "[a]s to the characterization of a tax, it is fundamental that the nature and effect of a tax, not its label, determine if it is an income tax or not." Id. at 958 (citations omitted) (emphasis added). With respect to the Commissioner's second argument, the Bishop court said, "a tax on gross receipts is not an income tax; a tax on net income is so, regardless of its nomenclature." Id. at 960 (citation omitted) (emphasis added).
We are bound by the interpretation given by the highest court of a sister jurisdiction to the law of that jurisdiction. In Elmendorf v. Taylor, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 152 (1825), Chief Justice Marshall wrote, for a unanimous Court, the following:
This Court has uniformly professed its disposition, in cases depending on the laws of a particular State, to adopt the construction which the Courts of the State have given to those laws. This course is founded on the principle, supposed to be universally recognised, that the judicial department of every government, where such department exists, is the appropriate organ for construing the legislative acts of that government. Thus, no Court in the universe, which professed to be gov erned by principle, would, we presume, undertake to say, that the Courts of Great Britain, or of France, or of any other nation, had misunderstood their own statutes, and therefore erect itself into a tribunal which should correct such misunderstanding.
Id. at 159-60. Accord Shelby v. Guy, 24 U.S. (11 Wheat.) 361, 367 (1826); Town of South Ottawa v. Perkins, 94 U.S. 260, 268 (1876).
It has long been the universal rule in this country, as a necessary consequence of our federal system embracing multiple sovereigns, that the decisions of the highest court of a jurisdiction, interpreting the law of that jurisdiction, are controlling authority in the courts of all other States as well as in the Federal courts. Nimick & Co. v. Iron Works, 25 W.Va. 184, 192 (1884). Accord News Pub. Co. v. Denison-Pratt Paper Co., 94 W.Va. 236, 247-49, 117 S.E. 920, 924-25, cert. denied, 263 U.S. 714 (1923) and 265 U.S. 588 (1924). This principle applies even where the construction given by the foreign court to its law is directly opposite to the construction the domestic court gives to its own law. Gilchrist v. West Va. Oil, etc., Co., 21 W.Va. 115, 119-20 (1882).
These principles are no strangers to our jurisprudence; we have consistently followed them. For example, in Norman v. Baldwin, 152 Va. 800, 148 S.E. 831 (1929), we said: "It has been repeatedly held by the Supreme Court of the United States, that the construction of a State statute, given by [its] highest appellate court, is binding on all courts. With all of this we are in accord." Id. at 810, 148 S.E. at 834. Accord Department of Taxation v. Smith, 232 Va. 407, 410, 350 S.E.2d 645, 647 (1986); Fourth Nat. Bank v. Bragg, 127 Va. 47, 60-61, 102 S.E. 649, 653 (1920).
Applying the construction given the UB statute by the highest court of the District of Columbia, we hold that it is an income tax. Because the trial court erred in granting summary judgment in the Commissioner's favor, we will reverse the judgment and remand the case to the trial court with direction to ascertain the credit due the taxpayer and order appropriate relief, consistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.