Court Opinion

ID: 9661719
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:47:19.525917+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:32.939532
License: Public Domain

WELLIVER, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the principal opinion to the extent that it rejects respondents’ argument that §§ 150.300 to 150.370, RSMo 1979, creates an impermissible subclassification of tangible personal property in violation of Mo.Const. art. X, § 4(a).
According to a letter filed in this Court dated January 15, 1980, to supplement the amicus curiae brief of Jackson County, Missouri, as of January 14,1980, the records of the Jackson County Director of Revenue showed that 946 of 9,132 merchants’ and manufacturers’ accounts billed in 1979 had been paid under protest. Nearly all of the written protest letters “gave as the reason for the protest the decision of the St. Louis County Circuit Court in the Metal Form Corp., et al. v. Leachman, et al.” which held that § 139.031 violates not only Mo.Const. art. X, § 4(a), but also Mo.Const. art. X, § 6. The sums paid under such protests amounted as of January 14,1980, to the staggering figure of $11,291,055.92 in Jackson County alone. If the statement in the supplement to the amicus brief is true, then the element of protest which the principal opinion found to be missing in these four cases may well have been supplied in the letters of protest filed in most of the other cases relating to the millions of dollars of presently impounded taxes around the state.
We should not leave for future litigation any question of disbursement of these presently impounded taxes. I agree with the view expressed in footnote 4 of the principal opinion that § 150.310 would be far less subject to criticism with subsection 3 repealed. However, I would hold in this case that § 150.310.3, RSMo 1978, does not violate Mo.Const. art. X, § 6, because the purported exemption in § 150.310.3 neither leaves the property untaxed nor taxes it at a different rate.