Doyle v. Mitchell Bros Co

• Decision Date: 20 May 1918
• Docket Number: No. 492,492
• Parties: DOYLE, Collector of Internal Revenue, v. MITCHELL BROS. CO
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

247 U.S. 179

38 S.Ct. 467

62 L.Ed. 1054

DOYLE, Collector of Internal Revenue,

v MITCHELL BROS. CO.

No. 492.

Argued March 4, 5, and 6.

Decided May 20, 1918.

Mr. Solicitor General Davis, of Washington, D. C., for petitioner.

Messrs. Mark Norris and Oscar E. Waer, both of Grand Rapids, Mich., for respondent.

Mr. Justice PITNEY delivered the opinion of the Court.

This was an action to recover from the Collector additional taxes assessed against the respondent under the Corporation Excise Tax Act of August 5, 1909 (chapter 6, 36 Stat. 11, 112, § 38), and paid under protest. The District Court gave judgment for the plaintiff, which was affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals (225 Fed. 437; 235 Fed. 686, 149 C. C. A. 106, L. R. A. 1917E, 568), and the case comes here on certiorari.

It was submitted at the same time with several other cases decided this day, arising under the same act.

The facts are as follows: Plaintiff is a lumber manufacturing corporation which operates its own mills, manufactures into lumber therein its own stumpage, sells the lumber in the market, and from these sales and sales of various by-products makes its profits, declares its dividends, and creates its surplus. It sells its stumpage lands, so-called, after the timber is cut and removed. Its sole business is as described; it is not a real estate trading corporation. Plaintiff acquired certain timber lands at its organization in 1903 and paid for them at a valuation approximately equivalent to $20 per acre. Owing to increases in the market price of stumpage the market value of the timber land, on December 31, 1908, had become approximately $40 per acre.¹ The company made no entry upon its books representing this increase, but each year entered as a profit the difference between the original cost of the timber cut and the sums received for the manufactured product, less the cost of manufacture. After the passage of the Excise Tax Act, and preparatory to making a return of income for the year 1909, the company revalued its timber stumpage as of December 31, 1908, at approximately $40 per acre. The good faith and accuracy of this valuation are not in question, but the figures representing it never were entered in the corporate books.

Under the act the company made a return for each of the years 1909, 1910, 1911, and 1912, and in each instance deducted from its gross receipts the market value, as of December 31, 1908, of the stumpage cut and converted during the year covered by the tax. There appears to have been no change in its market value during these years.

The Commissioner of Internal Revenue having al- lowed a deduction of the cost of the timber in 1903 and refused to allow the difference between that cost and the fair market value of the timber on December 31, 1908, the question is whether this difference (made the basis of the additional taxes) was income for the years in which it was converted into money, within the meaning of the act.

Other items are involved in the case, arising from the sale of certain stump lands, certain by-products, and a parcel of real extate, but they raise no different question from that which arises upon the valuation of the stumpage, and need not be further mentioned.

The act became effective January 1, 1909, and provided for the annual payment by every domestic corporation 'organized for profit and having a capital stock represented by shares' of an excise tax 'equivalent to one per centum upon the entire net income over and above five thousand dollars received by it from all sources during such year,' with exceptions not now material. It declared that such net income should be ascertained by deducting from the gross income received within the year from all sources the expenses paid within the year out of income in the maintenance and operation of business and property, including rentals and the like; losses sustained within the year and not compensated by insurance or otherwise, including a reasonable allowance for depreciation of property; interest paid within the year to a limited extent; taxes; and amounts received within the year as dividends upon stock of other corporations subject to the same tax. In the case of a corporation organized under the laws of a foreign country, the net income was to be ascertained by taking into account the gross income received within the year 'from business transacted and capital invested within the United States and any of its territories, Alaska, and the District of Columbia,' with deductions for expenses of maintenance and operation business losses, interest, and taxes, all referable to that portion of its business transacted and capital invested within the United States, etc.

An examination of these and other provisions of the act makes it plain that the legislative purpose was not to tax property as such, or the mere conversion of property, but to tax the conduct of the business of corporations organized for profit by a measure based upon the gainful returns from their business operations and property from the time the act took effect. As was pointed out in Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U. S. 107, 145, 31 Sup. Ct. 342, 347 (55 L. Ed. 389, Ann. Cas. 1912B, 1312) the tax was imposed 'not upon the franchises of the corporation irrespective of their use in business, nor upon the proper y of the corporation, but upon the doing of corporate or insurance business and with respect to the carrying on thereof'; an exposition that has been consistently adhered to. McCoach v. Minehill R. R. Co., 228 U. S. 295, 300, 33 Sup. Ct. 419, 57 L. Ed. 842; United States v. Whitridge, 231 U. S. 144, 147, 34 Sup. Ct. 24, 58 L. Ed. 159; Anderson v. Forty-Two Broadway, 239 U. S. 69, 72, 36 Sup. Ct. 17, 60 L. Ed. 152.

When we come to apply the act to gains acquired through an increase in the value of capital assets acquired before and converted into money after the taking effect of the act, questions of difficulty are encountered. The suggestion that the entire proceeds of the conversion should be still treated as the same capital, changed only in form and containing no element of income although including an increment of value, we reject at once as inconsistent with the general purpose of the act. Selling for profit is too familiar a business transaction to permit us to suppose that it was intended to be omitted from consideration in an act for taxing the doing of business in corporate form upon the basis of the income received 'from all sources.'

Starting from this point, the learned Solicitor General has submitted an elaborate argument in behalf of the government, based in part upon theoretical definitions of 'capital,' 'income,' 'profits,' etc., and in part upon expressions quoted from our opinions in Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U. S. 107, 147, 31 Sup. Ct. 342, 55 L. Ed. 389, Ann. Cas. 1912B, 1312, and Anderson v. Forty-Two Broadway, 239 U. S. 69, 72, 36 Sup. Ct. 17, 60 L. Ed. 152, with the object of showing that a conversion of capital into money always produces income, and that for the purposes of the present case the words 'gross income' are equivalent to 'gross receipts'; the insistence being that the entire proceeds of a conversion of capital assets should be treated as gross income, and that by deducting the mere cost of such assets we arrive at net income. The cases referred to throw little light upon the present matter, and the expressions quoted from the opinions were employed by us with reference to questions wholly remote from any that is here...