Court Opinion

ID: 9477897
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:34:25.615407+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:07.069657
License: Public Domain

WELLFORD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I agree with Judge Martin that the district court properly exercised jurisdiction in this difficult case despite the Tax Injunction Act. I agree also that 12 U.S.C. § 1768 provides the federal credit unions, which are the real parties at interest, with a clear exemption from “all taxation now or hereafter imposed ... by any State, Territorial or local taxing authority except ... real property and any tangible personal property....” Congress had the power to grant that exemption to those then newly authorized federally chartered agencies. The wisdom of such a broad tax exemption from state and local sales taxes to these agencies that operate in local communities much like the myriad other tax-paying credit agencies that now exist may be open to question in light of the developments of the intervening fifty years since federal credit unions came into being. I doubt that *811they any longer perform “an important governmental function,” but it is for the Congress to decide whether the exemption should continue in force. I am also not prepared to emphasize any federal fiscal agency role of federal credit unions.
I join in Judge Martin’s rationale dealing with the incidence of the Michigan sales tax upon instrumentalities such as federal credit unions. See First Agricultural National Bank v. State Tax Commission, 392 U.S. 339, 88 S.Ct. 2173, 20 L.Ed.2d 1138 (1968) and United States v. Mississippi Tax Commission, 421 U.S. 599, 95 S.Ct. 1872, 44 L.Ed.2d 404 (1975).
I dissent however with regard to the applicable statute of limitations period. I would not hold the exemption from state taxation to be related to or founded upon an implied contract or unjust enrichment theory or basis upon which recovery of state sales taxes mistakenly paid would be guided by 28 U.S.C. § 2415(a). I find no specific applicable limitation period fixed by federal law and would therefore hold this suit for recovery of state taxes to be subject to the four year limitation provided by § 9 of the Michigan General Sales Tax Act, Mich.Comp.Laws § 205.59. There was a voluntary payment of Michigan sales taxes here by the entities involved, and I would hold them, and the United States, bound by the reasonable Michigan limitations period of four years applicable to over-payment of these taxes.