Court Opinion

ID: 9418691
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:35:33.655906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:49:53.195806
License: Public Domain

*214Me. Justice Stone,
concurring.
I concur in the result. Whether or not control over a debt at the domicile of the debtor gives jurisdiction to tax the debt; Liverpool & L. & G. Ins. Co. v. Board of Assessors, 221 U. S. 346, 354, we are not here concerned with a property tax, but with an excise or privilege tax imposed on the transfer of an intangible, see Stebbins v. Riley, 268 U. S. 137; Saltonstall v. Saltonstall, 276 U. S. 260, and to sustain a privilege tax the privilege must be enjoyed in the state imposing it. Provident Savings Society v. Kentucky, 239 U. S. 103. It is enough, I think, to uphold the present decision that the transfer was effected in New York by one domiciled there and is controlled by its law.
Even though the contract transferred was called into existence by the laws of Minnesota, its obligation cannot be constitutionally impaired or withdrawn from the protection which those laws gave it at its inception. See Provident Savings Society v. Kentucky, 239 U. S. 103, 113, 144; Bedford v. Eastern Building & Loan Association, 181 U. S. 227. And while the creditor may rely on Minnesota law to enforce the debt, that may be equally true of the law of any other state where the debtor or his property may be found. So far as the transfer, as distinguished from the contract itself, is concerned, it is New York law and not that of Minnesota which, by generally accepted rules, is applied there and receives recognition elsewhere. See Bullen v. Wisconsin, 240 U. S. 625, 631; Russell v. Grigsby, 168 Fed. 577; Lee v. Abdy, 17 Q. B. Div. 309; Miller v. Campbell, 140 N. Y. 457, 460; Spencer v. Myers, 150 N. Y. 269. Once the bonds had passed beyond the state and were acquired by an owner domiciled elsewhere, the law of Minnesota neither protected, nor could it withhold the power of transfer or prescribe its terms.
*215In the light of these considerations, granting that the continued existence of the contract rested in part on the law of Minnesota, the relation of that law to the transfer in New York, both in point of theory and in every practical aspect, appears to me to be too attenuated to constitute any reasonable basis for deeming the transfer to be within the taxing jurisdiction of Minnesota.
As the present is not a tax on the debt, but only on the transfer of it, neither the analogies drawn from the law of property taxes nor the attempt to solve the present problem by ascribing to a legal relationship unconnected with any physical thing, a fictitious situs, can, I think, carry us very far toward a solution. Nor does it seem that the invocation of the Fourteenth Amendment to relieve from the burdens of double taxation, as such, promises more.
Hitherto the fact that taxation is “ double ” has not been deemed to affect its constitutionality and there are, I think, too many situations in which a single economic interest may have such legal relationships with different taxing jurisdictions as to justify its taxation in both, to admit of our laying down any constitutional principle broadly prohibiting taxation merely because it is double, at least until that characterization is more precisely defined. .
It seems to me to be unnecessary and undesirable to lay down any doctrine whose extent and content are so dubious. Whether it is far reaching enough to overturn those cases which, in circumstances differing somewhat from the present, have been regarded as permitting taxation in more than one state, reaching the same economic interest, is so uncertain as to suggest doubts' of its trustworthiness and utility as a principle of judicial decision. See Wheeler v. Sohmer, 233 U. S. 434, and Blodgett v. Silberman, 277 U. S. 1; Scottish Union & National *216Ins. Co. v. Bowland, 196 U. S. 611, 620; Rogers v. Hennepin County, 240 U. S. 184, 191; New Orleans v. Stempel, 175 U. S. 309; Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. New Orleans, 205 U. S. 395; Bristol v. Washington County, 177 U. S. 133; Kirtland v. Hotchkiss, 100 U. S. 491, and Savings & Loan Society v. Multnomah County, 169 U. S. 421; Union Refrig. Transit Co. v. Kentucky, 199 U. S. 194, 205; Tappan v. Merchants National Bank, 19 Wall. 490, 499; Corry v. Baltimore, 196 U. S. 466, and Hawley v. Malden, 232 U. S. 1, 12; Blackstone v. Miller, 188 U. S. 189 (so far as it relates to the transfer tax on a bank account in the state of the bank), and Fidelity & Columbia Trust Co. v. Louisville, 245 U. S. 54, 58; Bullen v. Wisconsin, 240 U. S. 625, 631.