Court Opinion

ID: 9697765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:29:11.669878+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:35.197703
License: Public Domain

Baldwin, J.
(dissenting). I cannot agree with the result reached by the majority. The issue in this case *274cuts deeper than the single question whether this bond for a deed is a chose in action taxable under the statute. General Statutes, § 1738, and the earlier forms thereof provides for the taxation of the property at 67 Collins Street as real estate. General Statutes, § 2082, required the executors of this estate, when they filed an inventory, to file an affidavit setting forth the items in the inventory on which a tax had been assessed by the city during the last completed taxing period. The executors complied with that provision and filed an affidavit showing that the real estate located at 67 Collins Street was assessed by the city of Hartford on the tax list of 1947. In fact, real estate taxes had been paid by the testator and her sisters in accordance with their agreement since 1924. General Statutes, § 2083, provides: “All taxable property of any estate upon which no town or city tax has been assessed as provided in section 2082 . . . shall be liable to a tax of two per centum per annum on the appraised inventory value of such property for the five years next preceding the date of the death of such decedent.. ..”
The real issue is the interpretation and construction of these statutes when considered together, as they should be. In Bankers Trust Co. v. Blodgett, 96 Conn. 361, 366, 114 A. 104, we held that the tax imposed by § 2083 is not a succession tax but a penalty for omitting to list property for taxation and a punishment for a wrong done the public treasury. Manufacturers Trust Co. v. Hackett, 118 Conn. 101, 104, 170 A. 792. A statute imposing a penalty should receive a strict construction in favor of those who might be subject to its provisions. “[N]o act should be held to be in violation . . . which does not fall within its spirit and the fair import of its language.” Morin v. Newbury, 79 Conn. 338, 340, 65 A. 156; State v. Faro, 118 Conn. 267, 273, 171 A. 660; State v. Parker, 112 Conn. 39, 46, 151 A. 325. *275Furthermore, statutes imposing a tax should be construed to avoid double taxation, “the undesirability of which has been accepted as a canon of judicial action in recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States.” McMurtry v. State, 111 Conn. 594, 605, 151 A. 252; Williams Bros. Mfg. Co. v. Naubuc Fire District, 92 Conn. 672, 677, 104 A. 245. The manifest purpose of the legislation, speaking generally, was to prevent the transfer of property, by will or inheritance, upon which no taxes had been paid during the lifetime of the decedent. The majority opinion makes the penalty statute, in effect, a succession tax statute and imposes a tax on a contract which was executory until the decedent’s death. The result is two taxes on the same res at the same time, one on it as realty and the other on it as personalty, a most objectionable form of double taxation.