Court Opinion

ID: 9793849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:54:24.233753+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:04:42.817618
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
with whom ALMA WILSON, Justice, joins, dissenting.
Today’s pronouncement closes the district courts to all those who timely claim refund of voluntary tax overpayment made in unawareness of a federal-law infirmity in the state exaction. It deprives these taxpayers of access to the only first-instance forum with authority to grant relief from the offending tax, relegating them instead to a protest before the Tax Commission, an agency powerless to strike down any statutorily imposed levy.1
In this Nation, which takes pride in its commitment to the rule-of-law principle, unlawful government exaction is very serious business. The U.S. Constitution regards it as confiscation of property from which a State must provide effective and meaningful relief.2 Responding to this command of Due Process,3 I would today open the district courts — sans any procedural barriers — to timely refund claims by all those taxpayers who protest their self-assessed liability to the State on federal or state constitutional grounds.
Because the remedy afforded by this court’s opinion falls short of the mandated minimum for a constitutionally acceptable refund regime, I recede from today’s pronouncement and from the court’s judgment to stand in dissent.

. Dow Jones & Co. v. State ex rel. Tax Com’n, Okl., 787 P.2d 843, 845 (1990).

. McKesson v. Div. of Alcoholic Beverages & Tobacco, 496 U.S. 18, 31, 110 S.Ct. 2238, 2247, 110 L.Ed.2d 17 (1990); Harper v. Virginia Dept. of Taxation, 509 U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 2510, 2519-2520, 125 L.Ed.2d 74 (1993).

. 14th Amend., U.S. Const.; Art. 2, § 7, OH. Const.; Strelecki v. Oklahoma Tax Com'n, Okl., 872 P.2d 910, 922 (1994).