Gill v. Bartlett
| Citation | 224 F. 927 |
| Decision Date | 18 June 1915 |
| Docket Number | 1113. |
| Parties | GILL, Internal Revenue Collector, v. BARTLETT. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit) |
James S. Allen, Jr., of Boston, Mass. (George W. Anderson, U.S Atty., of Boston, Mass., on the brief), for plaintiff in error.
Burton E. Eames, of Boston, Mass. (Tyler, Corneau & Eames, of Boston, Mass., on the brief), for defendant in error.
Before PUTNAM and DODGE, Circuit Judges, and ALDRICH, District Judge.
The question to be considered here, under section 29 of the War Revenue Act of 1898, is one of first instance, and it seems to us that the question is plainly one to be determined upon an interpretation of the statute itself, and that the decision below was sufficiently favorable to the government.
It is apparent that Congress in this statute disclosed no purpose to arbitrarily lay a tax upon distributive shares or legacies as specific properties, without regard to whether they are based upon real estate, or upon mixed real and personal properties. It is also apparent that Congress did not intend to make the validity of the tax in a given situation depend upon interpartnership or interassociate trust relationships in respect to distributive shares and legacies, irrespective of the origin and character of the property covered by such evidences of title.
The provision of the statute in question does not assume to authorize the laying of a tax upon the face of legacies or certificates of shares held in trust. It cuts under legacies and shares, and authorizes the imposition of a tax upon such only as arise from personal property. It would be a forced and unwarrantable construction of a statute, which fundamentally directs its authority to tax evidences of title which arise from personal property, to make it so read as to include such part of a legacy or share as is in fact based upon real estate.
The statute bases the tax upon the character of the property and the origin of the legacy or share. Therefore the cases cited from various jurisdictions which involve questions as to what property under given partnership relations is answerable for partnership debts, and cases involving questions as to what constitutes a technical conversion of land, held in trust into personal estate, have very little, if any, bearing, even by way of analogy, upon the question presented in the case at hand.
The imposition of a tax imposed by a government is a burden upon private interests laid upon private property under the necessary exercise of an arbitrary power, and because of the character of the power exercised, the rule is universal that when the question arises whether given property should be held subject to the burden, the taxing power must make it clear that the statute was intended to cover the property in question.
There is nothing in the statute which shows that Congress had any idea that...
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