Court Opinion

ID: 9725558
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:52:48.966232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:16.582585
License: Public Domain

COFFEY, J.
(concurring). I concur in the opinion of the majority and offer the following analysis of the sales tax provisions applicable to this case only to further demonstrate that the Wisconsin sales tax was not intended to apply to activities like those of the Sisters of St. Benedict involved in this case.
There is a significant paradox in the analysis upon which the litigants and the lower courts below have proceeded in this case. Nowhere in the record has it been made to appear whether the undifferentiated charges made by the petitioners for rooms and meals and use of the facilities were assessed against the various sponsoring organizations or against the individual participants in their respective meetings. It appears (pet. appen. at 305) that the rates were calculated only on a per capita basis; and that the use of the petitioners’ facilities was for the purpose of conducting group meetings and meals were provided without an additional charge. But even so, regardless of this assumption, it seems clear that the sponsoring associations were not, as such, the ultimate consumers of the meals provided. Therefore, either the sales in question were made to the individual participants (perhaps through the agency of the participants), or they were made to the sponsoring organizations and resold, or otherwise transferred or assigned by the sponsoring organizations to the individual participants.
The difference is an important one. If the buyer-seller relationship was of the first kind, the involvement and exempt or nonexempt status of the sponsoring group is immaterial. The issue becomes squarely one of whether any regular provision of meals for a charge, even in*574cidental to a purely religious retreat or conference privately convened by a few families, subjects the petitioners to sales tax liability.
If, however, the relationship was of the second type, it is apparent that the meals were intended for resale by the sponsoring groups, and thus, could not constitute “sales at retail” or “gross income from retail sales,” regardless of whether or not the sponsoring group was also exempt under e.g., sec. 77.54 (9a). Sales to such exempt groups may, nevertheless, arguably be taxable against the petitioners by virtue of sec. 77.51(4) (b), assuming that such groups in fact transfer the meals to the individual participants “without valuable consideration.” However, since business meetings most frequently include agents and employees of a particular entity, whose contracts of employment would in all probability of themselves provide the requisite consideration, the business organization is receiving compensation in return for the meals, regardless of whether money actually changes hands.
Since it is evident in this case that the petitioners have neither sought nor obtained certificates of exemption from any of the individuals or organizations to whom they have offered and supplied meals, a procedural presumption may arise that none of the sales are exempt either as a sale for resale or as a sale to an exempt governmental, educational, scientific or research organization. But, the position taken by the respondent in this litigation — that the petitioners are liable only for those meals sold to (or for) business organizations — is inconsistent with any such hypothesis. (Res. br..at 4). Most of the meals currently “sold” by the plaintiffs are meals bought by governmental, charitable or religious organizations whose purchases are exempted by sec. 77.52(9) (a), Stats. The tax at issue here is only on sale to nonexempt groups.
This is an anomalous concession, indeed, for it is obvious that meals are not consumed by corporations or as*575sociations of any kind, but only by individuals. If the sales in question were, in fact, to corporations and associations, it is clear that the sales in question were not “sales at retail,” and, hence, are necessarily exempted from “gross income” under the sales tax act. The petitioners would not, in that event, have been a “seller” under sec. 77.51 (9) and, therefore, because they were not a seller, they could not have become a “retailer” under sec. 77.51(7) (a). Nor, as the parties and both lower courts appear to concede, could they have been considered a retailer under sec. 77.51(7) (b), because it seems to be clearly established in the appellate court decision “that the Sisters were at no time engaged in a commercial enterprise such as furnishing meals to business groups.”
Whatever degree of dissent may arise respecting this conclusion of the court of appeals, as addressed to the participants in various business meetings, I know of no logical reason to believe that individuals, who simply partake of meals incidental to their participation in a privately arranged religious exercise, in the physical environment of a monastery, as selected and invited guests of a religious order, can translate or transpose that activity into a taxable sale simply by making a trifling contribution or payment. Even without considering the express protection afforded to religious exercises under the First Amendment, it seems clear beyond any reasonable question that the enjoyment of a simple meal with a family and guest falls within the scope or zone of essential privacy which the state must not infringe or enter upon.
But for the presence of sec. 77.51(10) (a), the general sales tax statute would operate to make every head of a household accountable to the Department of Revenue as a “seller” and “retailer” whenever he or she, as an incident to the service of a meal, received anything of value, including any fees, service charge, labor charge or other *576addition added to the price charged a customer by a retailer, which represents or is in lieu of a tip or a gratuity (sec. 77.51(11)). Children or adults could not be required or permitted to “earn their keep” by helping with kitchen or household chores, or to contribute to family support out of their own personal earnings, without exposing their parents to the possible criminal misdemean- or (sec. 77.52 (12)) of failure to obtain a retailer’s permit, or to comply with any other of the commercially oriented accounting procedures of the act. Logically, the same reasoning would necessarily apply to any invited guest whose contribution to a private meal was expected or accepted. The institution of quarterly or monthly social bridge, gin rummy or cribbage clubs and “pot luck” dinners and picnics would thus be immersed in and inundated with a sea of revenue regulations.
There can be no doubt that the legislature, in enacting sec. 77.51(10) (a), was alert to the obvious institutional shoals, as well as the obvious practical absurdity, of so wanton an invasion of the fundamental rights of familial privacy. However, the court of appeals, squarely faced with the question of whether that saving provision was available to any “neighborhood association, civic group, garden club, social club, or similar organization” in light of sub. (10) (c), ruled that all such organizations were confined to the narrow stricture of that section in exercising whatever degree of privacy was circumstantially due them. I disagree. In my view, sub. (10) (c) creates an a priori presumption of nontaxability in favor of the named organizations within the bounds of the activity described, “Three events, seven days.” This is true whether the number of taxable “admissions or tickets” within those days is ten or ten thousand. The subsection, in my opinion, does not apply to occupational and private sellers, a distinction which para, (a) was designed to preserve. The construction adopted by the court of appeals would operate to discriminate against pri*577vate and religious groups, reversing the constitutional priorities.
Further, there is an additional ground or reason for holding that the protections of para, (a) are available to these petitioners, uninhibited by the limitations of para. (c). Neither a religious person, nor a group of religious people, residing together in a religious community under the strict discipline and control of their respective order, can properly be called a “church” or “similar organization.” Their privately held and operated living and dining facilities and activities are not, as the record demonstrates, open to the public or to all who seek entry, even for religious purposes. The petitioners’ facility is unambiguously and accurately described as a “monastery,” the function of which is radically different from that of a church. A church is designed to accommodate the religious needs of a wide range of people known as parishoners, some formally registered and active in the church’s activities as such and some episodic. A monastery, in contrast, is the primary place of residence, worship, contemplation and service of a closed group of religious people joined in a brotherhood or sisterhood, frequently even cloistered, separated and apart from the outside world. While monasteries are members of churches, and share the evangelistic and theological doctrine of their faith, the two are very distinct, separate and different kinds of institutions with respect, most importantly, to their privacy.
If these monasteries were to operate a public restaurant facility outside their monastic setting and offer and serve meals and lodging to whomever chose to enter, a far different question would be presented to the court than the facts set forth in the sketchy record. There is no question, however, that no such circumstances are presented herein. The record is void of any showing that anyone entered upon the monastery premises to *578break bread, secure lodging-, or participate in intellectual and ecumenical discussions at the dining table with the sisters, except upon prior invitation (expressly designating them as guests) at a monastery meal. Nor under the strict and unbending rules of the Order, could anyone do so. Thus, to enforce the ruling of the court of appeals would go beyond the mandates of the revenue code and significantly invade the sisters’ reasonable and well-established expectation of privacy, contrary to the dictates of law.