Court Opinion

ID: 9418651
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:34:33.866995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:07.350863
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stone,
dissenting.
That businesses carried on in corporate form may be taxed while those carried on by individuals or partnerships are left untaxed, was the rule broadly applied under the Fifth Amendment in Flint v. Stone-Tracy Company, 220 U. S. 107, and I can see no reason for not applying •it here under the Fourteenth Amendment as well. It is no objection to a taxing statute that the classification is based on two distinct elements — here the doing of business in a corporate form, upheld in Flint v. Stone-Tracy Co., supra, (and see Home Insurance Co. v. New York, 134 U. S. 594; Fort Smith Lumber Co. v. Arkansas, 251 U. S. 532), and the character of the business done as distinguished from other classes of business, upheld in Southwestern Oil Co. v. Texas, 217 U. S. 114; Brown-Forman Co. v. Kentucky, 217 U. S. 563; Heisler v. Thomas Colliery Co., 260 U. S. 245. For it was decided in Stebbins v. Riley, 268 U. S. 137, that such a combination of two permissible bases of classification may itself be made the basis of a classification.