Evergreen-Washelli Memorial Park Co. v. Department of Revenue

• Decision Date: 09 February 1978
• Docket Number: No. 44796,EVERGREEN-WASHELLI,44796
• Citation: 574 P.2d 735,89 Wn.2d 660
• Parties: MEMORIAL PARK COMPANY et al. Respondents, v. DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE of the State of Washington, Appellant.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

Page 660

89 Wn.2d 660

574 P.2d 735

EVERGREEN-WASHELLI MEMORIAL PARK COMPANY et al. Respondents, v. DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE of the State of Washington, Appellant.

No. 44796.

Supreme Court of Washington, En Banc.

Feb. 9, 1978.

Slade Gorton, Atty. Gen., Leroy E. Dreisbach, Asst. Atty. Gen., Olympia, for appellant.

Karr, Tuttle, Koch, Campbell, Mawer & Morrow, Joseph D. Holmes, Jr., Seattle, for respondents.

UTTER, Associate Justice.

The Superior Court held that the business and occupation tax imposed by RCW 82.04.290 is inapplicable to the transfer, by certificate, of plots, crypts, and niches for the interment of human remains, because such transfers are exempted, under RCW 82.04.390, as the sale of real estate. We reverse the trial court and hold that RCW 82.04.390 does not exempt respondents' transfers from taxation.

Respondents are cemetery, mausoleum, and columbarium companies. They transfer to the public plots, crypts, and niches in the form of "interment rights certificates." Other such companies transfer these locations for interment of human remains by means of a deed following the form generally used in real estate transactions. Appellant Department of Revenue has distinguished between transfer by certificate and transfer by deed, exempting the latter under the provisions of RCW 82.04.390 while asserting the taxability of the former. See WAC 458-20-154. When all parties agreed that there was no practical or functional distinction between transfer by certificate and transfer by deed, and that respondents transferred all rights and privileges legally permissible, the trial court concluded that the two forms of transfer should be legally indistinguishable. The court then held that respondents are entitled to the exemption which the Department of Revenue has allowed companies using the deed form of transfer to claim.

This distinction made by the state is not before us because this case involves only the taxability of transfer under the "interment rights certificates" which respondents use. We specifically refrain from passing upon the propriety of the distinction which WAC 458-20-154 establishes and do not evaluate the exemption as applied to companies using the deed form.

I Nature of the Interest Transferred

Respondents rely upon the terms and tenor of RCW 68.24 and 68.32 to establish the exempt character of their transfers. These statutes do include language and terms generally employed in transfer of interests of real estate; they describe a variety of rights granted to the owners of plots, crypts, and niches, including rights of inheritance and alienation prior to interment.

Nevertheless, the transfer of an interest in interment property is not generally considered to be a transfer of the land itself, but only the sale of an interest similar to a license or a right to use for burial purposes. Despite certain characteristics similar to real estate transfers, transfers of interment property are highly regulated and the use to which interment property can be put is subject to unique restrictions which do not apply to "real estate" in the traditional and commonly understood sense.

The character of the interest inherent in the ownership of an interment right is peculiar to interment property and is difficult to describe. The reason for the difficulty, as well as a good description of the right, is set out in Mansker v. Astoria, 100 Or. 435, 452, 198 P. 199, 204 (1921):

The right with which we are now dealing is in reality sui generis, for the reason that the places where the dead sleep are by all humankind treated as holy ground and by us are withdrawn from many of the rules which govern ordinary property; and, consequently, it is difficult to define or to describe such right when we use words which are usually employed in designating other rights possessing qualities in part similar and in part dissimilar to those inhering in the right of burial. One of the descriptions or definitions of the right of burial is as follows: The right of burial is a privilege or license, to be enjoyed so long as the place continues to be used as a burial ground, subject to municipal regulation and control, and legally revocable whenever the public interest requires: . . .

See also Hammerstein v. Woodlawn Cemetery, 21 Misc.2d 42, 194 N.Y.S.2d 385 (1960); Schaefer v. West Lawn Memorial Cemetery, 222 Or. 241, 352 P.2d 744 (1960); Messina v. LaRosa, 337 Mass. 438, 150 N.E.2d 5 (1958); Huse v. East China Township Bd., 330 Mich. 465, 47 N.W.2d 696 (1951).

Consistent with the nearly universal authority in this country, we hold that no fee interest and no interest in the land itself is carried with a transfer of interment rights. By so doing, we are merely applying the rule which this court has already...