Court Opinion

ID: 9776324
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:30:43.779803+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:37.251659
License: Public Domain

Robert L. Brown, Justice, dissenting. I would affirm the trial court. The Arkansas Constitution provides this limitation on county taxes: No county shall levy a tax to exceed one-half of one percent for all purposes, but may levy an additional one-half of one percent to pay indebtedness existing at the time of the ratification of this Constitution. Ark. Const, art 16, § 9. The Arkansas Constitution was ratified in 1874 by vote of the people. At the time of ratification, the only tax contemplated by the Constitution and in effect was the ad valorem property tax. More than sixty years later the Arkansas General Assembly passed a gross receipts tax. See Act 386 of 1941, now codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 26-52-101 et seq. (Repl. 1992 & Supp. 1993). It is a gross receipts tax — not an ad valorem tax — that is at issue in this appeal. One rule of constitutional construction which we have followed in the past looks to the history of the constitutional provision and the mischief to be corrected: In interpreting constitutional amendments, we have said that a court, in order to determine the meaning and the extent of coverage of a constitutional amendment, may look to the history of the times and the condition existing at the time of the adoption of the amendment in order to ascertain the mischief to be remedied and the remedy adopted. Bryant v. English, 311 Ark. 187, 193, 843 S.W.2d 308, 311 (1992). Moreover, we have said that constitutional provisions should receive a consistent and uniform interpretation and when one interpretation has been followed for a number of years, it should not be changed. S.W. Ark. Communications, Inc. v. Arrington, 296 Ark. 141, 753 S.W.2d 267 (1988). It is beyond dispute that the people of Arkansas adopted the new constitution in 1874 in part to gain some control over high property taxes and the assessors who, because they received a percentage of all taxes levied, were apt to place unreasonably high assessments on the value of land. Ralph C. Barnhart, A New Constitution for Arkansas?, 17 Ark. L. Rev. 1, 3 (1963-64). The adopted constitution, as a result, prohibited the assessors from taking a percentage of property taxes levied and limited the percentage of taxes that the counties could levy against property. Arkansas Constitution, art 7, § 46; art. 16, § 9. Thus, the mischief to be remedied in 1874 does not apply to the gross receipts tax, and we should interpret the “taxes” referenced in Article 16, § 9, to be limited to ad valorem taxes. Furthermore, the authority for the ordinance by the Jefferson County Quorum Court is Act 26 of 1981, now codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 26-74-201 et seq. (1987 & Supp. 1993), which authorizes the one percent county-wide sales and use tax. That authority, heretofore, has not been called into question. Only now, over one hundred years after the adoption of the 1874 Constitution, does the majority impose constraints on county taxation. These constraints are implausible in light of the history of Article 16, § 9, the mischief intended to be corrected by that section, and the enactment of the gross receipts tax some 67 years later. I respectfully dissent. Holt, C.J., and Glaze, J., join in this dissent.