Brush v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

• Decision Date: 15 March 1937
• Docket Number: No. 451,451
• Citation: 108 A.L.R. 1428,81 L.Ed. 691,57 S.Ct. 495,300 U.S. 352
• Parties: BRUSH v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

300 U.S. 352

57 S.Ct. 495

81 L.Ed. 691

BRUSH

v COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE.

No. 451.

Argued Feb. 4, 1937.

Decided March 15, 1937.

Messrs. Boykin C. Wright, of Augusta, Ga., and Charles C. Parlin, of New York City, for petitioner.

Mr. Paul Windels, of New York City (Messrs. Oscar S. Cox and Paxton Blair, both of New York, City, of counsel), argued for the City of New York, as amicus curiae, by special leave of court.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 353-355 intentionally omitted] Mr. Julius Henry Cohen, of New York City (Mr. John J. Bennett. Jr., Atty. Gen., of New York, and Mr. Henry Epstein, Sol Gen. of New York, of Albany, of counsel), argued for the State of New York, as amicus curiae, by special leave of court.

[Argument of Counsel from Pages 356-358 intentionally omitted] Mr. J. Joseph Lilly, of New York City, for certain employees of the City of New York, amicus curiae.

Messrs. James H. Howard and Charles C. Cooper, Jr., both of Los Angeles, Cal., for certain employees of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, amicu curiae.

Messrs. Stanley Reed, Sol. Gen., of Washington, D.C., Robert H. Jackson, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Sewall Key, John Paul Jackson, and Berryman Green, Sp. Assts. to Atty. Gen., for respondents.

Mr. Justice SUTHERLAND delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question brought here for determination is whether the salary of petitioner as chief engineer of the bureau of water supply of the city of New York is a part of his taxable income for the purposes of the federal income tax law. The answer depends upon whether the water system of the city was created and is conducted in the exercise of the city's governmental functions. If so, its operations are immune from federal taxation and, as a necessary corollary, 'fixed salaries and compensation paid to its officers and employees in their capacity as such are likewise immune.' People of State of New York ex rel. Rogers v. Graves, 299 U.S. 401, 57 S.Ct. 269, 272, 81 L.Ed. 306 (January 4, 1937).

Petitioners holds his office as chief engineer by statutory authority, with a fixed annual salary of $14,000. He exercises supervision over the engineering details connected with the supplying of water for public purposes and for consumption by the inhabitants of the city; supervises the protection of the water supply from pollution; and generally exercises control over the operation of the water system, its personnel, expenditure of money, and other matters relating thereto.

In the early history of the city, water was furnished by private companies; but a century or more ago, the city itself began to take over the development and distribution. In 1831, the board of aldermen declared its dissatisfaction with the private control, and resolved that the powers then vested in private hands should be repealed by the Legislature and vested exclusively in the corporation of the city of New York. This, in effect, was initiated in 1833 (Laws 1833, c. 36); and, soon thereafter, the city constructed municipal waterworks, and, with slight exceptions, private control and operation ceased. The sources of water supply furnished by such companies as remain is approaching exhaustion, and the water furnished is of a quality inferior to that supplied by the municipality. From 1833 to the present time, additions to the water supply and system have been steadily made until the cost has mounted to more than $500,000,000; and it is estimated that additional expenditures of a quarter of a billion dollars will be necessary. The cost of bringing water from the Catskills alone amounted to approximately $200,000,000. The municipal outstanding bonded indebtedness incurred for supplying the city with water amounts to an enormous sum. More than half the entire population of the state is found within the municipal boundaries. The action of the city from the beginning has been taken under legislative authority.

The Commissioner of Internal Revenue having assessed a deficiency tax against petitioner in respect of his salary, petitioner sought a redetermination at the hands of the Board of Tax Appeals. That board sustained the commissioner and decreed a deficiency against petitioner of $256.27 for the year 1931. Upon review, the court below affirmed the decree of the board. (C.C.A.) 85 F.(2d) 32. While the sum involved is small, we granted the writ of certiorari because of the obvious importance of the question involved. 299 U.S. 536, 57 S.Ct. 190, 81 L.Ed. —-.

The phrase 'governmental functions,' as it here is used, has been qualified by this court in a variety of ways. Thus, in South Carolina v. United States, 199 U.S. 437, 461, 26 S.Ct. 110, 50 L.Ed. 261, 4 Ann.Cas. 737, it was suggested that the exemption of state agencies and instrumentalities from federal taxation was limited to those which were of a strictly governmental character, and did not extend to those used by the state in carrying on an ordinary private business. In Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U.S. 107, 172, 31 S.Ct. 342, 55 L.Ed. 389, Ann.Cas.1912B, 1312, the immunity from taxation was related to the essential governmental functions of the state. In Helvering v. Powers, 293 U.S. 214, 225, 55 S.Ct. 171, 173, 79 L.Ed. 291, we said that the state 'cannot withdraw sources of revenue from the federal taxing power by engaging in businesses which constitute a departure from usual governmental functions and to which, by reason of their nature, the federal taxing power would normally extend.' And immunity is not established because the state has the power to engage in the business for what the state conceives to be the public benefit. Id. In United States v. People of State of California, 297 U.S. 175, 185, 56 S.Ct. 421, 424, 80 L.Ed. 567, the suggested limit of the federal taxing power was in respect of activities in which the states have traditionally engaged.

In the present case, upon the one side, stress is put upon the adjective 'essential,' as used in the Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. Case, while, on the other side, it is contended that this qualifying adjective must be put aside in favor of what is thought to be the greater reach of the word 'usual,' as employed in the Powers Case. But these differences in phraseology, and the others just referred to, must not be too literally contradistinguished. In neither of the cases cited was the adjective used as an exclusive or rigid delimitation. For present purposes, however, we shall inquire whether the activity here in question constitutes an essential governmental function within the proper meaning of that term; and in that view decide the case.

There probably is no topic of the law in respect of which the decisions of the state courts are in greater conflict and confusion than that which deals with the differentiation between the governmental and corporate powers of municipal corporations. This condition of conflict and confusion is confined in the main to decisions relating to liability in tort for the negligence of officers and agents of the municipality. In that field, no definite rule can be extracted from the decisions.¹ It is true that in most of the state courts, including those in the state of New York, it is held that the operation of waterworks falls within the category of corporate activities; and the city's liability is affirmed in tort actions arising from negligence in such operation. But the rule in respect of such cases, as we pointed out in Trenton v. New Jersey, 262 U.S. 182, 192, 43 S.Ct. 534, 538, 67 L.Ed. 937, 29 A.L.R. 1471, has been 'applied to escape difficulties, in order that injustice may not result from the recognition of technical defenses based upon the governmental character of such corporations'; and the rule is hopelessly indefinite, probably for that very reason.

This is not, however, an action for personal injuries sounding in tort, but a proceeding which seeks in effect to determine whether immunity from federal taxation, in respect of the activity in question, attaches in favor of a state-created municipality—an objective so different in character from that sought in a tort action as to suggest caution in applying as the guide to a decision of the former a local rule of law judicially adopted in order to avoid supposed injustices which would otherwise result in the latter. We have held, for example, that the sale of motorcycles to a municipal corporation for use in its police service is not subject to federal taxation, because the maintenance of such a service is a governmental function. Indian Motorcycle Co. v. United States, 283 U.S. 570, 579, 51 S.Ct. 601, 604, 75 L.Ed. 1277. And while it is true that the weight of authority in tort actions accords with that view, there are state decisions which affirm the liability of a municipality for personal injury resulting from the negligence of its police officials under the circumstances presented in the respective cases dealt with.² Nevertheless, our decision in the Indian Motorcycle Case did not rest in the slightest degree upon a consideration of the state rule in respect of tort actions, but upon a broad consideration of the implied constitutional immunity arising from the dual character of our national and state governments.

The rule in respect of municipal liability in tort is a local matter; and whether it shall be strict or liberal or denied altogether is for the state which created the municipality alone to decide (Detroit v. Osborne, 135 U.S. 492, 497, 498, 10 S.Ct. 1012, 34 L.Ed. 260)—provided, of course, the Federal Constitution be not infringed. But a federal tax in respect of the activities of a state or a state agency is an imposition by one government upon the activities of another, and must accord with the implied federal requirement that state and local governmental functions be not burdened thereby. So long as our present dual form of government endures, the states, it must never be forgotten, 'are as independent of the general government...