Court Opinion

ID: 9641060
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:22:02.051803+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:34.778374
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I agree in the result but for other reasons than my brothers. The question appears to me wholly one of state law, with which-the sovereignty of the United States has nothing to do, although of course I agree that no state may tax property of the United States. On the other hand I do not understand it to be disputed that when the United States takes over property, it takes it subject to whatever liens are upon it, tax liens like the rest. If the law of a state were that all taxes should be liens as of March first, the time of the assessment, but might be computed, levied and extended on the rolls before July first, I see no reason why they should not be a lien upon land conveyed to the United States on March second. The aet of liquidating and formally imposing the tax would not in my judgment be in defeasance of the sovereignty of the United States. I cannot agree with the contrary ruling in U. S. v. Pierce County (D. C.) 193 F. 529. Bannon v. Burnes (C. C.) 39 F. 892, contains a dictum in accord, but it was altogether, unnecessary to the result. The levy and extension on the rolls are not adversary proceedings against the United States, like an arrest or seizure of its property; they do no more than fix the amount of a charge already imposed, and the liquidation does not depend upon questions in which the United States is interested except as all other owners of property. They are not directed against it individually, as is a suit, or a condemnation.
By the law of New York the exemption of charitable or ecclesiastical property under section 4 of the Tax Law dates from the completion of the assessment rolls. Association of Colored Orphans v. Mayor, 104 N. Y. 581, 12 N. E. 279; Sisters of St. Francis v. Mayor, 51 Hun, 355, 3 N. Y. S. 433, affirmed on opinion below, 112 N. Y. 677, 20 N. E. 417; In re American Fine Arts Society, 6 App. Div. 496, 39 N. Y. S. 564, affirmed 151 N. Y. 621, 45 N. E. 1131; People ex rel. Barnard College v. Wells, 46 Misc. Rep. 13, 89 N. Y. S. 847, affirmed, 92 App. Div. 622, 87 N. Y. S. 1143; Id., 179 N. Y. 524, 71 N. E. 1136. If that were all, I should be disposed to treat the exemption of the United States under the same section as dating from the same time. However, though with some doubt, I give to section 54 of the state law a wider scope. It came much later in the legislative history of' the state and its language at least admits, if it does not require, a construction forbidding the levy, stricti juris, of any tax upon United States property. I read the words distributively “taxes * * * levied” and “assessments or other charges * * • *475imposed.” “Assessments” means, I think, charges for public improvements which are distributed among the property benefited; it does not refer to the assessment of value for ordinary tax purposes. If so, we are entitled to take the word “levied” as a term of art, especially in dealing with a subject-matter where for long the terminology has been nice and technical. The doctrine easily yields to any contrary legislative expression (American Bible Society v. Commissioners, 142 N. Y. 348, 37 N. E. 116), and there is some antecedent reason to make a distinction between the property of charitable or ecclesiastic bodies, and that of the United States. The first is subject to the general power of the state, and is exempted as matter of grace; the second is without its jurisdiction. There is good ground for avoiding the appearance of any exercise of power over the property of another sovereign, even by means of an earlier reservation which would be lawful, if express. Formally the tax is imposed upon that property, though it involves no executive action, directed against it as such; in such a setting the words of a tax statute may well be taken strictly. Forced to an interpretation without the aid of ¿my decision of the Court of Appeals — which I should take as authoritative — I believe that under section 54 the levy was unlawful, and there certainly was no tax without a levy.'