Court Opinion

ID: 9660389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:12:21.013983+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:19.013998
License: Public Domain

Prewitt, Chief Justice,
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion for for the following reasons:
The Chancellor held the properties in question to be exempt under our statutes and the Court of Appeals affirmed the action of the Chancellor.
There is no controversy as to the use to which the subject real estate is applied.
*616Under Article 2, Section 28, of our Constitution it provides that all properties real, personal or mixed shall be taxed, but that the Legislature may except such as is held by States, Counties or Cities, and used exclusively for public purposes, and such as may be held and used for purposes purely religious, charitable, scientific, literary or educational.
Section 67-502 T.C.A., entitled “Exemption Generally” provides that the property therein enumerated shall be exempt from taxation. Sub-section (2) of the Code provides that the real estate owned by any religious, charitable, scientific or educational institution and occupied by such institution or its officers exclusively for carrying-out thereon one or more purposes for which said institution was created or exists, shall be exempt.
The section further provides that any other real estate, or property not used for such purposes, shall not be exempt.
Now it appears that the Sunday School Board owns certain other real estate that is taxable of which no question is made.
It is conceded by the City that the Administrative Building- and the Operations Building are exempt from taxation. It appears that in the basement of the Administrative Building- there is operated by the Board a cafeteria for employees, which is not a commercial operation, and this cafeteria is operated at a loss.
Another building operated by the Board is known as the Operations Building in which said Board maintains a snack bar, which has automatic machines to disepnse cold drinks.
*617Tbe Board also owns and maintains certain parcels of land, as parking areas for employees. These are not commercial parking lots and no portion of them is leased to any outsider, and no income is received.
Under the foregoing statement I think that the State Board of Equalization, the Chancellor, and the Court of Appeals were unquestionably right in holding that under the above stated statutes the property is exempt, that is the cafeteria for employees, the automatic machines to dispense cold drinks and the certain parcels of land as parking areas for employees, all are simply incidental to the real estate and are exempt from taxation under our statutes.
In this connection see Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention v. Evans, 192 Tenn. 495, 241 S.W.2d 543; M. E. Church South v. Hinton, 92 Tenn. 188, 21 S.W. 321; State v. Fisk University, 87 Tenn. 233, 10 S.W. 284; State ex rel. Davidson County v. Waggoner, 162 Tenn. 172, 35 S.W. 2d 389; Baptist Memorial Hospital v. Couillens, 176 Tenn. 300, 140 S.W.2d 1088.
For the foregoing reasons, I think the properties above enumerated are exempt from taxation and I would affirm the decree of the Court of Appeals.