Court Opinion

ID: 9419022
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:44:56.535736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:14.367841
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Butler,
dissenting:
Mr. Justice McReynolds and I- are of opinion that the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, being an instrumentality of the United States heretofore deemed immune from state taxation, “it necessarily results,” as held in New York ex rel. Rogers v. Graves (1937) 299 U. S. 401, “that fixed salaries and compensation paid to its officers and employees in their capacity as such are likewise immune”; and that the judgment of the state court, unquestionably required by that decision, should be affirmed:
From the decision just announced, it is clear that the Court has overruled Dobbins v. Commissioners of Erie County (1842) 16 Pet. 435; Collector v. Day (1871) 11 Wall. 113; New York ex rel. Rogers v. Graves, supra, and Brush v. Commissioner (1937) 300 U. S. 352. Thus now it appears that the United States has always had power to tax salaries of state officers and employees and that *493similarly free have been the States to tax salaries of officers and employees of the United States. The compensation for past as well as for future service to be taxed and the rates prescribed in the exertion of the newly disclosed power depend on legislative discretion not subject to judicial revision. Futile indeed are the vague intimations that this Court may protect against excessive or destructive taxation. Where the power to tax exists, legislatures may exert it to destroy, to discourage, to protect or exclusively for the purpose of raising revenue. See e. g. Veazie Bank v. Fenno, 8 Wall. 533, 548; McCray v. United States, 195 U. S. 27, 53 et seq.; Magnano Co. v. Hamilton, 292 U. S. 40, 44 et seq.; Cincinnati Soap Co. v. United States, 301 U. S. 308.
Appraisal of lurking or apparent implications of the Court’s opinion can serve no useful end for, should occasion arise, they may be ignored or given direction differing from that at first seemingly intended. But safely it may be said that presently marked for destruction is the doctrine of reciprocal immunity that by recent decisions here has been so much impaired.