Court Opinion

ID: 9454376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:44:53.772586+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:05.760115
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Judge
(dissenting):
I see the stipulation as wholly inadequate for an informed decision. Possibly we are allowing ourselves to be lured into delivering pronouncements that we will live to regret.
The former administrative application of the Act to crews of International air carriers for the short time they were over United States territory, e. g., on the way to or from Kennedy International Airport, some might see as an absurdity. It is not stated whether the IRS stationed observers in the Long Island marshes, with stopwatches, to ascertain the precise instant when a foreign flag air carrier became subject to the FICA. The Congress took appropriate action. 26 U.S.C. § 3121(b) (4). There is nothing to show whether the IRS ever before 1961 took a parallel stand respecting highway carriers. If they did, I find it hard to believe there would not have been litigation or at least a revenue ruling, yet none is cited. So I conclude that the position of the IRS in this case was .newly arrived at in 1961 and has no claim to respect as a contemporaneous construction of the statute.
The fact that international carriers enjoy certain implied exemptions from the customs laws is well recognized. The Conqueror, 166 U.S. 110, 118, 17 S.Ct. 510, 41 L.Ed. 937 (1897). 19 U.S.C. § 1322(a) refers to them as “customary exemptions.” Thus, a Canadian truck is not dutiable all over again every time it enters the United States carrying international cargo. It is not even dutiable the first time. These “customary” exemptions had an established legal existence long before the Congress first recognized them in § 1322(a). I would like to be shown that Canadian highway carriers did not obtain, for trips between Canadian and United States points, after the enactment of the Social Security Act and before 1961 a “customary exemption” of equal validity.
In construction of revenue legislation, courts do not readily impute an intent to impose double taxation. Maass v. Higgins, 312 U.S. 443, 449, 61 S.Ct. 631, 85 L.Ed. 940 (1941). It was conceded here in oral argument that Canada has a complete system of social security taxes and our attention was not called to any provision allowing a credit or rebate for taxes paid the United States. Thus we have a perfect system of double taxation. The burden falls in part on the Canadian drivers and there is nothing to show they could in any way enjoy any part of the benefits that United States residents enjoy from paying similar taxes, unless the Canadian employer persisted in using them repeatedly on international trips to his own financial detriment. If our IRS does this, so can Canada. This system of mutual double taxation of international carriers and their employees could, if carried to its logical conclusion, bring international trade to a halt. The defendant has shown itself so contemptuous of these considerations that it has not even offered us any reassuring suggestions as to why my fears might be exaggerated.
The majority refers to Church Of The Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 459, 12 S.Ct. 511, 36 L.Ed. 226 (1892), and our decision following *690it. Select Tire Salvage Co., Inc. v. United States, 386 F.2d 1008, 1012, 181 Ct.Cl. 695, 703 (1967). They are the last cases the majority should wish to remind readers of. Select invokes a rule of caution in arriving at any interpretation of a revenue act which discriminates against foreign trade. That rule receives short shrift here. Holy Trinity holds that we should not construe a provision of the immigration laws, intended to bar coolie labor, in such a fashion as to penalize a United States church for employing a foreign preacher.
I do not favor deciding for plaintiff. The case is not ripe for decision. Here are some of the things we are not told (a) except by inference, what the administrative practice was before 1961; (b) whether any treaty with Canada is applicable, including whether any most favored nation treaty with Canada makes treaties with third countries applicable and what the State Department thinks of all this; (c) who owned the trucks the drivers drove, and where they were registered; (d) whether they are regulated common carriers and if so, by what Government; and most important of all, (e) whether the trips were international, i. e., between Canadian and United States points.
This decision will not settle anything. Someone will “make a new case” and put the pertinent considerations properly before the court, this court or another. I do not think counsel here acted in bad faith or in disregard of their clients’ interests. No doubt each had his own good reasons for desiring a decision, the one made or its reciprocal, on the facts given in the stipulation, and no others. But I do not think we should allow counsel, whatever their motives, to put blinders on us. If we let them, it is no different from deciding moot cases. Counsel may suppose they are establishing a point of law, but mere delusion is all that is. Courts make valid and lasting law in response to clear and comprehensive notions as to the facts. Judge-made laws, arrived at otherwise, are nothing but “weasel words”, to recall the kind of exposition Theodore Roosevelt supposed Woodrow Wilson to be a master of.
I would reject the stipulation and order trial.