Court Opinion

ID: 9583724
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:41:31.821942+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:48.837115
License: Public Domain

HODGES, Vice Chief Justice
(dissenting) :
Appellant contends the differential rate assessed married and single taxpayers is an unconstitutional application of the law. I agree.
*701The Oklahoma Constitution art. 10 § 5 provides:
The power of taxation shall never be surrendered, suspended, or contracted away. Taxes shall be uniform on the same class of subjects.
This country was founded, not on the class system employed in other nations, but on the premise all men are created equal. It is, therefore, inconceivable to me that persons are divided into classes of subjects for income tax purposes. The majority opinion approves the rationale of Kellems that the tax is levied based on the ability to pay. This is fallacious reasoning. The fact that a person is single is not persuasive proof that he is more able to pay. It is a legal conclusion without a rational basis. He may be helping to support parents, children and siblings or paying non-exempt property settlement for an ex-wife. Indeed, the single person contributes to the support of schools for children he may not have, and presumably uses fewer government services than a married couple. Perhaps he should receive a tax credit rather than tax penalty.
Aside from these arguments, the most ominous facet of the situation is the arbitrary invasion of his civil rights by penalizing one who does not conform to society’s ideal. It results in taxing those who are single merely because the legislature believes, without any proof to support this belief, that their incomes are sufficiently great to bear a greater tax burden. A classification which divides the same class of subjects, i. e., citizens of this state based on marital status rather than income is an arbitrary classification. The right to marriage, the right to divorce, and the right to remain single, are basic fundamental human civil rights. The state may not penalize its citizens for making a personal choice concerning their domestic status.1
The majority has determined the constitutional provision is applicable to property tax only.2 The Pennsylvania court in Kelley v. Kalodner, 320 Pa. 180, 181 A. 598 (1935) answers and rejects the majority rationale.3 It determined an income tax statute as it attempted to levy tax upon income from real estate, stocks, bonds, or similar securities imposes a property tax and is subject to the constitutional requirements of uniformity. The entire taxing statute was held to be unconstitutional because possible sources of revenue were interwoven. Oklahoma taxable income is defined by 68 O.S.1971 § 2353(12) as income as reported to the federal government. This includes tax on property. It is obvious that two persons, one married and one single, could become partners in an apartment complex, each receiving rentals as taxable income. All other things being equal, the single person would pay a larger percentage of tax on this income than his married partner simply because of his marital status. A tax to be uniform must operate alike on the property subject to it. Classification of property for taxation must rest on some distinction which bears a reasonable and just relationship to the classification.4 The state may not exercise its power in establishing tax classifications in clear and hostile discrimination between particular persons and classes.5 I can find no reasonable basis for the tax rate differential based on marital status.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and case law have increasingly mitigated against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It is appro*702priate that the last bastion of discrimination, taxation based on marital status, be eliminated.
The Oklahoma Income Tax Act 6 is invidiously discriminatory and creates widespread tax preferences in direct conflict with the mandate of the uniformity clause and is, therefore, unconstitutional. I respectfully dissent.

. Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 91 S.Ct. 780, 28 L.Ed.2d 113 (1971).

. Johnston v. Oklahoma Tax Commission, 497 P.2d 1295, 1298 (Okl.1972).

. See also Amidon v. Kane, 444 Pa. 38, 279 A.2d 53, 60 (1971).

. Custer County Excise Board v. St. Louis-San Francisco Ry., 201 Okl. 528, 207 P.2d 774 (1949) ; Schlesinger v. Wisconsin, 270 U.S. 230, 46 S.Ct. 260, 70 L.Ed. 301, 43 A.L.R. 1224 (1926) ; Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Wisconsin, 247 U.S. 132, 38 S.Ct. 444, 62 L.Ed. 1025 (1918).

. Citizen Telephone Co. v. Fuller, 229 U.S. 322, 33 S.Ct. 833, 57 L.Ed. 1206 (1913).

. 68 O.S.1971 § 2351 et seq.