Court Opinion

ID: 9418547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:30:47.873913+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:05.431281
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Sutherland,
dissenting.
By the plain terms of the Revenue Act of 1913, the value of property acquired by gift, bequest, devise, or descent is not to be included in net income. Only the income derived from such property is subject to the tax. The question, as it seems to me, is really a very simple one. Money, of course, is property. The money here sought to be taxed as income was paid to respondent under the express provisions of. a will. It was a gift by will, — a bequest. United States v. Merriam, 263 U. S. 179, 184. It, therefore, fell within the precise letter of the statute; and, under well settled principles, judicial inquiry may go no further. The taxpayer is entitled to the *169rigor of the law. There is no latitude in a taxing statute, — you must adhere to the very words. United States v. Merriam, supra, pp. 187-188.
The property which respondent acquired being a, bequest, there is no occasion to ask whether, before being handed over to him, it had been carved from the original corpus of, or from subsequent additions to, thé estate. The corpus of the estate was not the legacy which respondent received, but merely the source which gave rise to it. The money here sought to be taxed was not the fruits of a legacy; it was the legacy itself. Matter of Stanfield, 135 N. Y. 292, 294.
With the utmost respect for the judgment of my brethren to the contrary, the opinion just rendered, I think without warrant, searches the field of argument and inference for a meaning which should be found only in the strict letter of the statute.
Mr. Justice Butler concurs in this dissent.