Court Opinion

ID: 9605865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:42:49.32427+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:30.704552
License: Public Domain

*523Justice Lake
dissenting.
It is not the function of this Court to establish tax policies for the State so as to promote desirable segments of the economy, or so as to do economic or social justice among groups of taxpayers. Those are functions of the Legislature. Our authority is limited to construing the Revenue Act as written by the Legislature and, when the question is properly raised, to determine the constitutional validity of a provision thereof. Thus, we are not here concerned with whether it is economically wise, or just, to tax sales of equipment to commercial hatcheries at the same rate as sales of groceries to the housewife, while taxing at a much lower rate sales of mill machinery to textile plants or furniture factories.
The cardinal principle of statuory construction is, of course, that the words of the statute must be construed so as to carry out the intention of the Legislature. Sellers v. Refrigerators, Inc., 283 N.C. 79, 194 S.E. 2d 817; Person v. Garrett, 280 N.C. 163, 184 S.E. 2d 873; Pipeline Co. v. Clayton, 275 N.C. 215, 166 S.E. 2d 679; In re Watson, 273 N.C. 629, 161 S.E. 3d 1, 35 A.L.R. 2d 1114. Subordinate principles are that, in order to determine the legislative intent, in the absence of a clear indication to the contrary, words in a statute must be given the meaning they have in ordinary usage, Power Co. v. Clayton, 274 N.C. 505, 164 S.E. 2d 289, and Bleacheries, Inc. v. Johnson, 266 N.C. 692, 147 S.E. 2d 177, 17 A.L.R. 3d 1, and provisions in a taxing statute granting an exemption or a lower tax rate are to be strictly construed against the claimant of such exemption or special privilege. In re Clayton-Marcus Co., Inc., 286 N.C. 215, 210 S.E. 2d 199; Good Will Distributors v. Shaw, Comr. of Revenue, 247 N.C. 157, 100 S.E. 2d 334; Henderson v. Gill, Comr. of Revenue, 229 N.C. 313, 49 S.E. 2d 754.
In ordinary speech one does not talk of manufacturing eggs and chickens but of producing, hatching and raising them. “Mill machinery” and “accessories to manufacturing industries and plants” are terms which do not readily come to mind as one contemplates a farmer buying materials with which to make nesting boxes for his hens or feeding pens for his baby chicks. The inapplicability of those terms to that activity is no less when the farmer has hundreds of hens instead of half a dozen. The process of chicken production is not generically different when the farmer becomes a corporation and the carefully regulated temperature of an electrically powered incubator and the turn*524ing of the eggs by a mechanical device are substituted for the warm body and stirring feet of the loving, though irascible, natural mother. “Mill machinery” and “manufacturing industries” simply do not suggest the production of baby chicks. If the special tax rate should be extended to those engaged in this activity, it is a simple matter for the Legislature, now in session, to do so.
Justice Branch joins in this dissenting opinion.