Court Opinion

ID: 9425204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:03.353626+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.025327
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
dissenting.
The Illinois statute in question, Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 120, § 439.3 (1971), taxes the use of tangible personal property in Illinois, and “use” is defined as being the “exercise . . . *640of any right or power over tangible personal property incident to the ownership of that property . . . Id., § 439.2. The Illinois Supreme Court held that as applied in this case the statute taxed either the storage or the withdrawal therefrom of aviation fuel. But the statute itself goes on to exempt from tax property temporarily stored in the State, withdrawn from storage, loaded on transportation facilities and transported for use solely outside the State. Id., §439.3 (d). For the tax to apply, the property must not only be stored and subsequently withdrawn, but must also be further used or consumed in the State. It is this actual use or consumption in the State after storage and withdrawal that triggers the tax. Thus it was enough here to invoke the tax that the fuel was temporarily stored, withdrawn, loaded on interstate aircraft, and then partially used within the State. But Helson v. Kentucky, 279 U. S. 245 (1929), forbids taxing the use of gasoline consumed within the State on an interstate trip. And as for that portion of the fuel withdrawn from storage, loaded on an aircraft and consumed in another State, the exemption in the statute would seemingly cover it; but if the exemption itself is not to apply, Hel-son, a fortiori, bars the tax. Moreover, under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Illinois has no jurisdiction to tax the use of property occurring in another State. Norfolk & W. R. Co. v. Missouri State Tax Comm’n, 390 U. S. 317, 324-325 (1968), and cases there cited.