Arnold v. Berra
| Decision Date | 11 March 1963 |
| Docket Number | No. 49134,49134 |
| Citation | 366 S.W.2d 321 |
| Parties | Ralph F. ARNOLD et al., Appellants, v. Louis G. BERRA, Collector of Revenue for the City of St. Louis Respondent. |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Stanford S. Meyer, Meyer & Meyer, Belleville, Ill., Hillary H. Hallett, Wiseman & Hallett, Alton, Ill., John L. Sullivan, St. Louis, for appellants.
Thomas J. Neenan, City Counselor, Thomas F. McGuire, Associate City Counselor, John J. Fitzgibbons, Asst. City Counselor, St. Louis, Paul Welch, Donald Gunn, St. Louis, for respondent Louis G. Berra, Collector of Revenue for City of St. Louis.
BARRETT, Commissioner.
The plaintiff, Ralph F. Arnold, a resident of Illinois, on behalf of himself and other similarly situated nonresidents of Missouri, instituted this action for a declaratory judgment and an injunction contesting the validity of Ordinance 47063, the earnings tax ordinance of the City of St. Louis. The ordinance and its amendments in 1954, 1959, 1960, and 1961, were enacted after the General Assembly's new enabling act, Laws of Missouri 1953, 2nd Ex.Sess., p. 14, authorizing any constitutional charter city to levy and collect, as far as material here, an earnings tax on the salaries, wages and other compensation of its residents and 'on the salaries, wages, commissions and otheer compensation earned by nonresidents of the city for work done or services performed or rendered in the city * * *.' 7 V.A.M.S.Supp., Sec. 92.110. Incidentally, the plaintiff does not challenge the validity of the enabling act as the parties challenged the original act (Laws Mo. 1951, p. 334) in Walters v. City of St. Louis, 364 Mo. 56, 259 S.W.2d 377. The trial court decreed the ordinance to be reasonable, constitutional and valid and specifically found that the allegations in the plaintiff's pleadings did not entitle him to relief and, therefore, dismissed the action and the plaintiff has appealed.
In his petition the plaintiff alleges that he is a resident of Illinois, that he and those similarly situated have been continuously employed 'by various boards, offices, commissions and agencies of the United States' and that their employment requires the performance of their duties in the City of St. Louis. After alleging the facts with respect to the enactment and enforcement of the earnings tax ordinance, the plaintiff alleges that he and other residents of Illinois are subjected to numerous taxes by the State of Illinois and its political subdivisions 'which said taxes duplicate in source or use' the tax levied by St. Louis. The petition alleges that the tax ordinance is unconstitutional and invalid in several respects, but upon this appeal it is urged that the ordinance is invalid for two reasons: (1) that it infringes the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, because it 'deprives non-resident workers in the City of St. Louis, of property without due process of law by exacting a tax from them without any corresponding benefit' and (2) that it 'places an undue burden on interests commerce by taking plaintiffs' gross incomes and by duplicating in source or use taxes levied by the State of Illinois and its political subdivisions' and thus contravenes the commerce clause, Art. 1, Sec. 8, Constitution of the United States.
A so-called 'earnings tax' is 'a species of income or excise tax,' and in substance the ordinance involved here and its predecessors were modeled after similar ordinances in Philadelphia and Toledo. Carter Carburetor Corp. v. City of St. Louis, 356 Mo. 646, 653, 654, 203 S.W.2d 438, 440, 441. But the first earnings tax ordinance, involved in the Carter Carburetor case, was declared invalid because there was then, 1947, no specific or implied authority in the City of St. Louis to levy such a tax. As soon as the specific authority to levy the tax was granted (Laws Mo.1951, p. 334) and an ordinance enacted, both the enabling act and the ordinance were upheld as against the constitutional and other objections then made against them. Walters v. City of St. Louis, supra; Walters v. City of St. Louis, 347 U.S. 231, 74 S.Ct. 505, 98 L.Ed. 660. The specific objection first made here, that a tax is exacted without corresponding benefit or service and therefore federal due process is infringed, was not urged in those cases but the same argument has been made in other jurisdictions and decided against the appellant.
In Angell v. City of Toledo, 153 Ohio St. 179, 91 N.E.2d 250, it was pointed out that the taxing city afforded fire and police protection to the plaintiff's employer and thus afforded the nonresident a protected place in which to work. In a case involving the Philadelphia ordinance...
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...tax and not a burden on interstate commerce, even though the individual whose wages are subject to tax lives in another state. Arnold v. Berra, Mo., 366 S.W.2d 321. The individual defendant employees in the case before us, irrespective of their residence, work on boats whose business operat......
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...the taxing jurisdiction of Maine and cannot be considered as any burden, directly or indirectly, on interstate commerce. Arnold v. Berra (Mo.1963), 366 S.W.2d 321. See also Kiker, supra, and Shaffer v. Carter (1920), 252 U.S. 37, 40 S.Ct. 221, 64 L.Ed. The order which, by agreement, brought......