Court Opinion

ID: 9417689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:31:21.462524+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:00:11.014471
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan
further dissenting.
I concur so entirely in the general views expressed by Mr. Justice White in reference to the questions disposed of by the *653opinion and judgment of the majority, that I will do no more than indicate, without argument, the conclusions reached by me after much consideration. Those conclusions are:
1. Giving due effect to the statutory provision that “ no suit for the purpose of restrainin'g’the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court,” Rev. Stat. § 3224, the decree below dismissing the bill should be affirmed. As the Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company could not itself maintain a suit to restrain either the assessment or collection of the tax imposed by the act of Congress, the maintenance of a suit by a stockholder to restrain that corporation and its directors from voluntarily paying such tax would tend to defeat the manifest object of the statute, and be an evasion of its provisions. Congress intended to forbid the issuing of any process that would interfere in anywise with the prompt collection of the taxes imposed. The present suits are mere devices to strike down a general revenue law by decrees, to which neither the government nor any officer of the United States could be rightfully made parties of record.
2. Upon principle, and under the doctrines announced by this court in numerous cases, a duty upon the gains, profits, and income derived from the rents of land is not a “ direct ” tax on such land within the meaning of the constitutional provisions requiring capitation or other direct taxes to be apportioned among the several States, according to their respective numbers determined in the mode prescribed by that instrument. Such a duty may be imposed by Congress without apportioning the same among the States according to population.
3. While property, and the gains, profits, and income derived from property, belonging to private corporations and individuals, are subjects of taxation for the purpose of paying the debts and providing for the common defence and the general welfare of the United States, the instrumentalities employed by the States in execution of their powers are not subjects of taxation by the general government, any more than the instrumentalities of the United States are the subjects of taxation by the States; and any tax imposed directly upon interest derived from bonds issued by a municipal corporation *654for public purposes, under the authority of the State whose instrumentality it is, is a burden upon the exercise of the powers of that corporation which only the State creating it may impose. In such a case it is immaterial to inquire whether the tax is, in its nature or by its operation, a direct or an indirect tax; for the instrumentalities of the States — among which, as is well settled, are municipal corporations, exercising powers and holding property, for the benefit of the public — are not subjects of national taxation, in any form- or for -any purpose, while the property of private corporations and of individuals is subject to taxation by the general govern^ ment for national purposes. So it has been frequently adjudged, and the question is no longer an open one in this court.
Upon the several questions about which the members of this court are equally divided in opinion, I deem it appropriate to withhold any expression of my views, because the opinion of the Chief Justice is silent in regard to those questions.