United States v. New Mexico

Decision Date24 March 1982
Docket NumberNo. 80-702,80-702
Citation455 U.S. 720,71 L.Ed.2d 580,102 S.Ct. 1373
PartiesUNITED STATES, Petitioner v. NEW MEXICO, et al
CourtU.S. Supreme Court
Syllabus

Sandia Corporation and Zia Company have contracts with the Federal Government to manage certain Government-owned atomic laboratories located in New Mexico. Los Alamos Constructors, Inc., has a Government contract for construction and repair work at one of the laboratories. The contracts use an "advanced funding" procedure to meet contractor costs whereby the contractor is allowed to pay creditors and employees with drafts drawn on a special bank account in which United States Treasury funds are deposited, so that only federal funds are expended when the contractor meets its obligations. New Mexico imposes a gross receipts tax and a compensating use tax on those doing business within the State. The gross receipts tax in effect operates as a tax on the sale of goods and services. The use tax is imposed on property acquired out-of-state in a transaction that would have been subject to the gross receipts tax if it had occurred within the State. The Government brought suit in Federal District Court, seeking a declaratory judgment that advanced funds are not taxable gross receipts to the contractors; that the receipts of vendors selling property to the Government through the contractors cannot be taxed by the State; and that the use of Government-owned property by the contractors is not subject to the use tax. The District Court granted summary judgment for the Government. The Court of Appeals reversed, taking the view that the Government-contractor relationships in question did not so incorporate the contractors into the Government structure as to make them "instrumentalities of the United States" immune from the New Mexico taxes.

Held: The contractors, as independent taxable entities, are not protected by the Constitution's guarantee of federal supremacy, and hence are subject to the state taxes in question. Pp. 730-744.

(a) Federal immunity from state taxation cannot be conferred simply because the tax has an effect on the United States, or because the Federal Government shoulders the entire economic burden of the levy, or because the tax falls on the earnings of a contractor providing services to the Government. And where a use tax is involved, immunity cannot be conferred simply because the State levies the tax on the use of federal property in private hands, or, indeed, simply because the tax is paid with Government funds. Tax immunity is appropriate only when the state levy falls on the United States itself, or on an agency or instrumentality so closely connected to the Government that the two cannot realistically be viewed as separate entities, at least insofar as the activity being taxed is concerned. A finding of constitutional tax immunity therefore requires something more than the invocation of traditional agency notions. Pp. 730-738.

(b) With respect to the New Mexico use tax, the contractors cannot be termed "constituent parts" of the Federal Government. The congruence of professional interests between the contractors and the Government is not complete, the contractors' relationship with the Government having been created for limited and carefully defined purposes. Allowing a State to apply use taxes to such entities does not offend the notion of federal supremacy. United States v. Boyd, 378 U.S. 39, 84 S.Ct. 1518, 12 L.Ed.2d 713. For similar reasons the New Mexico gross receipts tax must be upheld as applied to funds received by the contractors to meet salaries and internal costs. As to the tax on sales to the contractors, the facts that Sandia and Zia make purchases in their own names and presumably are themselves liable to the vendors, that the vendors are not informed that the Government is the only party with an independent interest in the purchase, and that the contractors need not obtain Government approval for each purchase, all demonstrate that the contractors have a substantial independent role in making purchases, and that the identity of interests between the Government and the contractors is far from complete. As a result, sales to Sandia and Zia are in neither a real nor a symbolic sense sales to the "United States itself." Kern-Limerick, Inc. v. Scurlock, 347 U.S. 110, 74 S.Ct. 403, 98 L.Ed. 546, distinguished. The fact that title passes directly from the vendor to the Government cannot alone make the transaction a purchase by the United States, so long as the purchasing entity, in its role as purchaser, is sufficiently distinct from the Government. Pp. 738-743.

624 F.2d 111, 10 Cir., affirmed.

George W. Jones, Chicago, Ill., for petitioner, pro hac vice, by special leave of Court.

Daniel H. Friedman, Santa Fe, N.M., for respondents.

Justice BLACKMUN delivered the opinion of the Court.

We are presented here with a recurring problem: to what extent may a State impose taxes on contractors that conduct business with the Federal Government?

I
A.

This case concerns the contractual relationships between three private entities and the United States. The three agreements involved are typical in most respects of management contracts devised by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), now the Department of Energy (DOE).1 Like many of the Government's contractual undertakings, DOE management contracts generally provide the private contractor with its costs plus a fixed fee. But in several ways DOE agreements are a unique species of contract, designed to facilitate long-term private management of Government-owned research and development facilities. As the parties to this case acknowledge, the complex and intricate contractual provisions make it virtually impossible to describe the contractual relationship in standard agency terms. See App. 196-197; Hiestand & Florsheim, The AEC Management Contract Concept, 29 Federal B.J. 67 (1969) (Hiestand & Florsheim). While subject to the general direction of the Government, the contractors are vested with substantial autonomy in their operations and procurement practices.2

The first of the contractors, Sandia Corporation, was organized in 1949 as a subsidiary of Western Electric Company, Inc. Sandia manages the Government-owned Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque, N. M., and engages exclusively in federally sponsored research. It receives no fee under its contract, and owns no property except for $1,000 in United States bonds that constitute its paid-in capital. But Sandia and Western Electric are guaranteed royalty-free, irrevocable licenses for any communications-related discoveries or inventions developed by most Sandia employees during the course of the contract, App. 34-35, and the company receives complete reimbursements for salary outlays and other expenditures. Id., at 40-42.3

The Zia Company, another of the contractors, is a subsidiary of Santa Fe Industries, Inc. Since 1946, Zia has performed a variety of management, maintenance, and related functions at the Government's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, for which it receives its costs as well as a fixed annual fee. While Zia owns property and performs private work, virtually none of its property is used in the performance of its contract with the Government, and all of its private activities are conducted away from Los Alamos by a separate work force.

The third contractor is Los Alamos Constructors, Inc. (LACI), since 1953 a subsidiary of Zia. LACI's operations are limited to construction and repair work at the Los Alamos facility. The company owns no tangible personal property and makes no purchases; it procures needed property and equipment through its parent, Zia. And like Zia, LACI receives its costs plus a fixed annual fee from the Government.

The management contracts between the Government and the three contractors have a number of significant features in common. As in most DOE atomic facility management agreements, the contracts provide that title to all tangible personal property purchased by the contractors passes directly from the vendor to the Government. App. 231a (Zia); id., at 34 (Sandia).4 Similarly, the Government bears the risk of loss for property procured by the contractors. Zia and LACI must submit an annual voucher of expenditures for Government approval. Id., at 20 (Zia); id., at 27 (LACI).5 And the agreements give the Government control over the disposition of all property purchased under the contracts, as well as over each contractor's property management procedures. Disputes under the contracts are to be resolved by a DOE contracting official. Id., at 128-129 (Zia standard terms) and 157-158 (Sandia standard terms).

On the other hand, the contractors place orders with third-party suppliers in their own names, and identify themselves as the buyers. See id., at 36-37 (Sandia contract) and 120 (Zia standard terms). Indeed, the Government acknowledged during discovery that Sandia, Zia, and LACI "may be . . . 'independent contractor[s],' rather than . . . 'servant[s]' for . . . given 'function[s] under' the contract[s] (e.g., directing the details of day-to-day . . . operations and the hiring and direct supervision of employees)," id., at 197, and the Government does not claim that the contractors are federal instrumentalities. Id., at 201; see Department of Employment v. United States, 385 U.S. 355, 87 S.Ct. 464, 17 L.Ed.2d 414 (1966). Similarly, the United States disclaims responsibility for torts committed by the contractors' employees, and maintains that such employees have no claim against the United States for labor-related grievances. See 624 F.2d 111, 116-117, n. 6 (CA10 1980).

Finally, and most importantly, the contracts use a so-called "advanced funding" procedure to meet contractor costs. Advanced funding, an accounting device developed shortly after the conclusion of the Manhattan Project, is designed to provide "up-to-date meaningful records of costs and controls of property," as well as to ...

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