Court Opinion

ID: 9419795
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:31.621311+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:20.638928
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Frankfurter,
concurring.
The Government sold a piece of surplus property located in St. Paul, Minnesota. It put the vendee in possession .but retained the legal title, with the right of re-entry, as security for portions of the purchase price remaining due under the contract of sale. The decisive question before us is whether the interest thus retained by the United States bars Minnesota, under a general non-discriminatory law, from taxing the vendee’s interest in the property. The Constitution itself furnishes no answer in terms. But the considerations governing the appropriate adjustment between national and state powers of taxation, where the incidence of taxation may affect the property or functions of one another, do not require that entire immunity from state taxation be afforded this piece of property because *572of the interest which the United States retained to secure the unpaid purchase price. Since the Government’s security is left untouched by Minnesota, what remains of the Government’s relation to the property is too attenuated to withdraw it entirely from Minnesota’s taxing power.
The matter would hardly be open to question but for a series of cases arising under land grant legislation. As the opinion of the Court persuasively shows, these decisions rest upon considerations of policy not relevant to the immediate situation.
I agree with the Chief Justice that our disposition of this case should be confined to the only question raised by the record, that of the State’s power to tax, unembarrassed by any issue as to territorial jurisdiction. The Chief Justice gives conclusive ground for such abstention. Moreover, even as to property indisputably owned by the Government, there may be “uncertainty and confusion” whether jurisdiction belongs to the Federal Government or to a State. See Bowen v. Johnston, 306 U. S. 19, 27; and Pacific Coast Dairy v. Dept., 318 U. S. 285, 299. Taxability and territorial jurisdiction are not correlative. We ought not to borrow trouble.