Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue, 42

• Citation: 275 U.S. 87,72 L.Ed. 177,48 S.Ct. 100
• Decision Date: 21 November 1927
• Docket Number: No. 42,42
• Parties: COMPANIA GENERAL DE TABACOS DE FILIPINAS v. COLLECTOR OF INTERNAL REVENUE
• Court: United States Supreme Court

275 U.S. 87

48 S.Ct. 100

72 L.Ed. 177

COMPANIA GENERAL DE TABACOS DE FILIPINAS

v COLLECTOR OF INTERNAL REVENUE.

No. 42.

Argued and Submitted Oct. 18, 1927.

Decided Nov. 21, 1927.

Messrs. W. F. Williamson and B. M. Aikins, both of San Francisco, Cal., and Barry Mohun, of Washington, D. C., for petitioner.

Mr. Wm. Cattron Rigby, of Washington, D. C., for respondent.

Mr. Chief Justice TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas, hereafter to be called the Tobacco Company, brought this suit is the Court of First Instance in Manila to recover from the Philipine collector of internal revenue certain sums paid under protect as internal revenue taxes on insurance premiums which the Tobacco Company during the year 1922, through its head office in Barcelona, Spain, paid to the Guardian Insurance Company of London, England, and to Le Comite des Assurances Maritimes de Paris, of Paris, France. These two insurance companies we shall hereafter designate as the London Company and the Paris Company. The case was heard on an agreed statement of facts. The Tobacco Company is a corporation duly organized under the laws of the kingdom of Spain and licensed to do business in the Philippine Islands, maintaining its chief office in the Islands in the city of Manila. During the year 1922 the Tobacco Company purchased and placed in its warehouses in the Philippines merchandise, and from time to time notified its head office in Barcelona of its value. The Tobacco Company, at its head office in Barcelona, then insured the merchandise against fire under open and running policies of insurance carried by it with the London Company, and paid premiums of 4,835.32 pesos. Subsequent to the purchase of the merchandise, the Tobacco Company from time to time shipped it to Europe, and by cable notified its head office in Barcelona of the value of the shipments. The head office thereupon insured with the Paris Company these shipments for and on behalf of the Tobacco Company against marine risks under open and running policies, premiums on which amounted during the year 1922 to 100,050.44 pesos, and the premiums thus paid were charged to the expense of the Tobacco Company at Manila. The London Company is licensed to do insurance business in the Philippine Islands and has an agent there. The Paris Company is not licensed to do business in the Philippines and has no agent there. Losses, if any, on these policies, were to be paid to the Tobacco Company by the London Company in London and by the Paris Company in Paris. The insurance effected was secured without the use of any agent, company, corpora- tion, or other representative of the companies doing business in the Philippine Islands. The collector in 1923 assessed and collected from the Tobacco Company a tax of 1 per cent. upon the premiums paid by it to the London Company of 4,832.25 pesos, or 48.32 pesos, and on those paid by it to the Paris Company 100,050.44 pesos, or 1,000.50 pesos. These sums were paid under protest in writing. The protests were overruled on the 27th day of July, 1923, and on the 16th of August the plaintiff filed this action for the recovery of the taxes.

The taxes were collected under section 192 of Act No. 2427, as amended by Act No. 2430, of the Statutes of the Philippines (9 Public Laws, 292). That section provides that it shall be unlawful for any person or corporation in the Philippines to procure, receive or forward applications for insurance in, or to issue or to deliver or accept policies of, or for, any company or companies not having been legally authorized to transact business in the Philippine Islands, and that any person or company violating this section shall be guilty of a penal offense and upon conviction shall be punished by a fine of 200 pesos, or imprisonment for two months, or both in the discretion of the court. The section contains a proviso that insurance may be placed by authority of a certificate of the insurance commissioner to any regularly authorized fire or marine insurance agent of the Islands, subject to revocation at any time, permitting the person named therein to procure policies of insurance on risks located in the Philippine Islands in companies not authorized to transact business in the Philippine Islands. Before the agent named in the certificate shall procure any insurance in such company, it must be shown by affidavit that the person desiring insurance after diligent effort has been unable to procure in any of the companies authorized to do business in the Philippine Islands the amount of insurance necessary. The agent is to make a yearly report to the collector of internal revenue of all premiums received by the company he represents under the previous authority, and he is to pay to the collector of internal revenue a tax equal to twice the tax imposed by section 79 of Act No. 2339 (i. e., 1 per cent. thereof), which tax shall be paid at the same time and be subject to the same penalty for delinquency as the tax imposed by Act No. 2339. 9 Public Laws of Philippine Islands, February 27, 1914, p. 296. It is provided further that the prohibitions of the section shall not prevent an owner of property from applying for and obtaining for himself policies in foreign companies in cases where he does not make use of an agent residing in the Philippine Islands. In such cases it shall be his duty to report to the insurance commissioner each case where the insurance has been effected and shall pay a tax of 1 per centum on premiums paid in the manner required by law of insurance companies, and shall be subject to the same penalties for failure to do so.

The court of first instance sustained the validity of the tax as to each insurance company. The Supreme Court of the Philippines affirmed the judgment. Two judges of the latter court dissented on the ground that the tax violated the rule of uniformity, and was a denial of the equal protection of the law.

The Philippine Organic Act (39 Stat. 545, 546, c. 416, § 3 (48 USCA § 1008; Comp. St. § 3810)) by its section 3 imposes upon the Legislature of the Philippine Islands the same limitation by which the Fourteenth Amendment restrains the states of the Union, to wit, that no law shall be enacted in said Islands which shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. The question of the validity of the tax on the premiums differs in respect to those paid the two insurance companies. Coming, then, to the tax on the premiums paid to the Paris Company, the contract of insurance on which the premium was paid was made at Barcelona in Spain, the headquarters of the Tobacco Company, between the Tobacco Company and the Paris Company, and any losses arising thereunder were to be paid in Paris. The Paris Company had no communication whatever with any one in the Philippine Islands. The collection of this tax involves an exaction upon a company of Spain lawfully doing business in the Philippine Islands effected by reason of a contract made by that company with a company in Paris on merchandise shipped from the Philippine Islands for delivery in Barcelona. It is an imposition upon a contract not made in the Philippines, and having no situs there, and to be measured by money paid as premium in Paris, with the place of payment of loss, if any, in Paris. We are very clear that the contract and the premiums paid under it are not within the jurisdiction of the government of the Philippine Islands. The taxpayer, however, is resident in the Philippine Islands, and within the governmental jurisdiction of those Islands. Its property in the Islands and its agents doing business there are within the reach of the government of the Islands. The company may be compelled to pay what the government in its quasi sovereignty chooses to exact as a matter of power, unless restrained by law. A legal restriction upon the taxing power of the Philippine government over citizens and residents of the Islands is found in the liberty secured by the Organic Act which embraces the right to make contracts and accumulate property and do business outside of the Philippine Islands and beyond its jurisdiction without prohibition, regulation, or governmental exaction.

In Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U. S. 578, 17 S. Ct. 427, 41 L. Ed. 832, a law of Louisiana provided that any person who should do any act in Louisiana to effect for himself or for another insurance on property then in that state in any marine insurance company which had not complied in all respects with the laws of the state should be subject to a fine of $1,000 for each offense. Allgeyer was sued for violating the statute, because he had mailed a letter in New Orleans to the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company of New York advising that company of a shipment of 100 bales of cotton to foreign ports, with bill of lading and an insurance certificate in accordance with the terms of an open marine policy of its issuing. Action was brought to recover for three such violations of the act the sum of $3,000. The answer was that the act was unconstitutional, in that it deprived the defendant of its liberty without due process of law; that the business concerning which the defendants were sought to be made liable and the contracts made in reference to such business were beyond the jurisdiction of the state, because the contract of insurance was made with an insurance company in the state of New York, where the premiums were to be paid and where the losses thereunder, if any, were to be paid. This court held that citizens of a state had a right to contract outside the state for insurance on their property a right of which the state Legislature could not deprive them, because coming within the 'liberty,' protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the letter sent to the company was a proper act, which the state Legislature had no right to prevent; this...