Court Opinion

ID: 9581366
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:14:12.71016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:53.691924
License: Public Domain

Hale, J.
(dissenting) — I find little basis in etymology and none in decisional law, statute or regulation to warrant a holding that one who charges a fee for using his own equipment and machinery to vacuum clean another’s furnace is charging for janitorial services. The owner, in my opinion, in having his furnace, flues and chimney vacuum cleaned, is hiring neither a janitor nor custodian nor building superintendent, but simply engaging an independent contractor to perform a specialized job at a contract price. That the vacuum cleaning in part overlaps or replaces some of the janitor’s duties is no more of a coincidence than that a plumber in using his particular skills to repair or restore the plumbing may be doing some of the tasks that the janitor could or should have done. The trial court, therefore, in my opinion, correctly held that the Pringles owe the state $9,360.17, and its judgment should be affirmed.
The Pringles are engaged in the business of cleaning furnaces, chimneys and flues, using a truck-mounted, multi*576pie-bag vacuum cleaner, parts of which the elder Pringle invented. For cleaning a home furnace and chimney, their regular charge is $12.50. They do the job and then take their equipment away. They do not stay at or near the furnace to perform the services of a janitor.
In these respects, the Pringles’ business resembles that of a catering company who will, for a price, cook a meal in a home or office, serve it and then depart with their equipment. Would the catering company be engaged in performing janitorial services if, as a part of their contract, they cleaned up the premises before and after serving the meal? In such instances, the caterers are no closer to being domestic servants in the household than the Pringles are to being janitors. These distinctions should apply to many other kinds of skilled services which involve cleaning up the area where the work is to be done — i.e., plumbing, electrical repairing, roofing, carpentry and gardening. Thus, I cannot see how the Pringles, in vacuum cleaning one’s furnace, flues and chimneys on a fixed fee contract can be said to be tending the heating system any more than the caterers who serve a meal in the home for a fixed price are deemed to be family cooks or domestic servants.
The court’s opinion by analogy refers to industrial cleaners who assist the housewife in “spring cleaning,” and points out that these activities are not taxable as janitorial services; but it should be mentioned, too, that most of the activities encompassed within the term “spring cleaning” are explicitly described as nontaxable in Excise Tax Bulletin 3.08.172, promulgated by the Department of Revenue in which window washing, floor cleaning and waxing, and cleaning of interior walls and woodwork are expressly excluded from taxation. Thus, by administrative construction, the department has placed the spring housecleaning activities within the janitorial services’ category but with equal explicitness included furnace vacuum cleaning within the taxable activities under its rule 170. Besides, the people who assist the housewife with “spring cleaning” more often than not are called “husbands,” and their services assuredly are not taxable as janitorial services either' in accordance *577with an obvious exemption or as a species of involuntary servitude.
Every retail sale transacted in this state is taxed. RCW 82.08.020. That is, every transaction defined by statute to constitute a retail sale (RCW 82.04.050) and not exempted by the statute is taxable. Therefore, unless the transaction sought to be taxed falls within the exemption from or exception to the tax, it is taxable. In this instance, the tax is imposed on the Pringles as follows:
The term “sale at retail” or “retail sale” shall include the sale of or charge made for tangible personal property consumed and/or for labor and services rendered in respect to the following: . . . (c) the sale of or charge made for labor and services rendered in respect to the cleaning, fumigating, razing or moving of existing buildings or structures, but shall not include the charge made for janitorial services;
(Italics mine.) RCW 82.04.050.
The court’s opinion, I think, dwells too much on the practical side of janitorial work and too little on the practical side of collecting taxes. It fails to observe, I believe, a basic rule of construction in taxation that the taxing power is nearly plenary, and the exceptions to its application should be strictly construed. In expanding the term janitorial services to include the vacuum cleaning of furnaces, chimneys and flues by an independent contractor, the court has adopted a holding which runs counter to what I think is an unbroken line of precedents — both that exemptions to a tax statute should be strictly construed and that the long-held interpretation and application of a revenue collecting agency of the state are entitled to great interpretative weight. Moreover, in ascertaining what it is the legislature is taxing and what is being exempted, “Dictionary definitions and judicial decisions from other states are not of much assistance.” Stokely-Van Camp, Inc. v. State, 50 Wn.2d 492, 312 P.2d 816 (1957), at 496. Unless the item or procedure subject to the tax is nearly identical to that in the case, our own decisions would not be definitive either.
*578Referring now to the taxing measure vis-a-vis the declared exemption, the law requires a narrow construction of the latter. “[A]n exemption in a statute imposing a tax must be strictly construed in favor of the application of the tax and against the person claiming the exemption.” Yakima Fruit Growers Ass’n v. Henneford, 187 Wash. 252, 60 P.2d 62 (1936), at 258; All-State Constr. Co. v. Gordon, 70 Wn.2d 657, 425 P.2d 16 (1967). Taxation is the rule and exemption is the exception. Fibreboard Paper Prods. Corp. v. State, 66 Wn.2d 87, 401 P.2d 623 (1965). Anyone claiming a benefit or deduction from a taxable category has the burden of showing that he qualifies for it. Group Health Coop. of Puget Sound, Inc. v. State Tax Comm’n, 72 Wn.2d 422, 433 P.2d 201 (1967).
The court’s opinion, I think, not only fails to apply the rules laid down by these cases but runs actually contra to them. By including the taxpayer’s activities among those described in the statute as janitorial services, it makes the exemption or benefit the rule and the tax the exception.
The court’s opinion, also, I think, takes a long and established administrative procedure too lightly. The levying and collecting of taxes constitutes one of the vital and continuing processes of government — one which inevitably confronts the legislature regularly each session. Thus, when the tax commission, now the Department of Revenue, in 1959 promulgated its rule 170 for the collection of the retail sales taxes from persons who hired others to vacuum clean their furnaces and flues, it did so advisedly and explicitly, as follows:
The Retail Sales Tax does not apply to charges made for janitorial services nor for the mere leveling of land used in commercial farming or agriculture. The tax does apply, however, in respect to contracts for cleaning furnaces, chimneys or the exterior walls of buildings, as well as to earth moving, land clearing and the razing or moving of structures, whether or not such services are performed as incidents of a contract to construct, repair, decorate, or improve buildings or structures.
(Italics mine.)
*579Since the promulgation of rule 170 in 1959, presumably millions of dollars in taxes have been collected under it, and the legislature, meeting in 1961, 1963, 1965, 1967 and 1969 and in extraordinary sessions in 1961, 1965, 1967 and 1969 while rule 170 was kept operable, made no changes whatever in its legal effect. Moreover, RCW 82.04.050 during this period was reenacted five times without change in any part which could reasonably be deemed pertinent to the furnace vacuum cleaning business. I think, therefore, that the circumstances supporting an administrative construction here are extraordinarily strong, involving as they do the day-to-day collection of taxes under them and throughout numerous sessions of the legislature. The operation of rule 170 is the very kind of governmental action which is sure to be brought to the attention of the legislature, for who is more likely to protest governmental actions than an irate taxpayer?
In State ex rel. Pirak v. Schoettler, 45 Wn.2d 367, 274 P.2d 852 (1954), the Director of Fisheries, an officer charged with interpreting and enforcing statutes regulating commercial fishing, construed a statute to mean that a “reef net” was not a “fish trap.” We sustained the director’s interpretation, saying:
The persuasive force of such an interpretation is strengthened when the legislature, by its failure to amend a statute, “silently acquiesces” in the administrative interpretation.
Accord: White v. State, 49 Wn.2d 716, 725, 306 P.2d 230 (1957). Again, in Tipsword v. Department of Labor & Indus., 52 Wn.2d 79, 323 P.2d 9 (1958), and State ex rel. Blume v. Yelle, 52 Wn.2d 158, 324 P.2d 247 (1958), silence by the legislature was held to sustain the statutory interpretation of this court in the former and executive interpretation in the latter.
No one, I think, can sensibly contend that a manifestly erroneous construction placed upon a statute by either the courts or administrative agencies should be controlling in the light of legislative inaction (Latimer v. Western Mach. Exch., 40 Wn.2d 155, 241 P.2d 923 (1952)), and I agree *580that an administrative or departmental agency cannot by interpretation amend or modify a statute. Hansen Baking Co. v. Seattle, 48 Wn.2d 737, 296 P.2d 670 (1956); Pierce County v. State, 66 Wn.2d 728, 404 P.2d 1002 (1965). But in the instant case, the court, I think, even in the absence of a long-held administrative interpretation and actual administration of the act, had to strain at semantics to reach the result here obtained.
Thus, whatever ambiguity is claimed for the phrase “janitorial services” was, I think, fully resolved in the long and frequently applied construction given it by the tax commission and the Department of Revenue. We should also heed the explicit interpretation set forth in rule 170. This accords with our statement in Morin v. Johnson, 49 Wn.2d 275, 279, 300 P.2d 569 (1956), and in In re Estate of Lloyd, 53 Wn.2d 196, 199, 332 P.2d 44 (1958),that:
[T]he court should give great weight to the contemporaneous construction of an ordinance by the officials charged with its enforcement. This is especially true where the administrative construction has been accompanied over a period of years by the silent acquiescence of the legislative body.
Accord: Ropo, Inc. v. Seattle, 67 Wn.2d 574, 409 P.2d 148 (1965).
The federal courts follow the prevailing rule, too, and give great weight to administrative construction and practice and will not overturn them except for cogent reasons and then only in doubtful cases. Norwegian Nitrogen Prods. Co. v. United States, 288 U.S. 294, 77 L. Ed. 796, 53 S. Ct. 350 (1933); Fisher Flouring Mills Co. v. United States, 270 F.2d 27 (9th Cir. 1958); Hood v. United States, 256 F.2d 522 (9th Cir. 1958); Western Boat Bldg. Co. v. O’Leary, 198 F.2d 409 (9th Cir. 1952).
I would, therefore, affirm.
Finley and Hamilton, JJ., concur with Hale, J.