Court Opinion

ID: 9807615
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:11:18.370211+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:49:06.866815
License: Public Domain

Barnhill, J.,
dissenting in part: Insofar as the majority conclude that the “per carload” privilege tax levied under G. S. 105-47 is valid and enforceable I concur. However, I cannot subscribe to the conclusion that the additional “per head” tax is a license or. privilege tax and as such is a lawful exercise of the taxing power. In my opinion it constitutes an undue and unlawful burden on interstate commerce.
North Carolina is not a stock-raising state. The number of horses and mules raised in this State for sale on the market is so negligible they constitute only an infinitesimal fraction of the total. Certainly 98% or more are shipped into the State. S. v. Vick, 213 N. C., 235, 195 S. E., 779. Perhaps the consciousness of this fact prompted the Legislature, in defining “purchase,” to use the significant language “whether such horses and/or mules are shipped into this state by railroad or brought in otherwise”; and later to provide that the tax “shall be due and payable immediately upon receipt of such horses and/or mules within this state.”
*184Under the taxing provision of the Act, A buys horses and mules out of the State and has them shipped into the State for resale. He must pay a franchise tax of $3 per head. He resells by carload lot to B, C, and D, dealers who purchase for resale. They pay the carload tax but pay no per head tax. Thus the purchaser whose mules are shipped into the State pays while the dealer whose source of supply is within the State does not pay.
This, in a nut shell, presents my views. The question is one of construction. If I correctly read the statute it is, as a privilege tax, so clearly in contravention of the Federal Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court further discussion or citation of authority is unnecessary. I vote to affirm as to the per carload tax and reverse as to the per head tax.
Devin, J., joins in this opinion.