Griggsry Construction Company v. Freeman

• Decision Date: 01 January 1901
• Docket Number: 14,288
• Citation: 108 La. 435,32 So. 399
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: GRIGGSRY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY v. J. W. FREEMAN, TAX COLLECTOR, ET ALS

32 So. 399

108 La. 435

GRIGGSRY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY v. J. W. FREEMAN, TAX COLLECTOR, ET ALS

No. 14,288

Supreme Court of Louisiana

January 1, 1901

Rehearing refused.

APPEAL from the Eleventh Judicial District, Parish of Natchitoches -- Porter, J.

Jack &amp Fleming, for Plaintiff, Appellant.

Walter Guion, Attorney General, and W. A. Wilkinson, District Attorney (Lewis Guion and Chaplin, Breazeale & Chaplin, of Counsel), for State of Louisiana, Defendant, Appellee.

OPINION

PROVOSTY J.

By section 1 of act 170 of 1898, the revenue law of the State, it is provided that taxes are levied "on all property situated within the State of Louisiana except such as is expressly exempted from taxation by law"; and that "the term property, as herein used, means and includes * * * all movable and immovable, corporeal and incorporeal articles or things of value owned and held and controlled within the State of Louisiana by any person whatsoever."

By section 7 of the same act, it is made the duty of the assessors "to put upon the assessment list all property subject to taxation within their respective districts or parishes."

By section 12 of the same act, property omitted from the assessment roll must be assessed on a separate roll.

By section 14, it is made the duty of every taxpayer to fill out a list of a prescribed form, and to make oath to same and to return same to the Assessor before the first day of May of each year; and it is provided that "any refusal, neglect or failure from any cause whatsoever to comply with this provision of this act, shall act as estopping the taxpayer from contesting the correctness of the assessment list filed by the Assessor."

By section 19, it is provided that in case the taxpayer fails or refuses to furnish said list of his property within the time prescribed, the Assessor "shall himself fill out said list from the best information he can obtain."

In making his assessment for the year 1901 the Assessor of the parish of Natchitoches called upon the plaintiff's agent to furnish, as required by law, a list of its property situated in the parish and subject to taxation. The plaintiff is a Texas corporation, having its domicile at Dallas, Texas. It operates in that State and in adjoining States in the construction of dams, dykes, levees, railroad beds, and other earthwork, and for that purpose has outfits consisting of mules, scrapers, wagons, commissary store goods, tents, etc., etc., which it sends to the places where work is to be done. At the time when its agent was thus called upon by the Assessor, plaintiff was doing grading work for the Texas and Pacific railroad in the parish of Natchitoches, and the property sought to be assessed was a construction outfit and other movables necessary or convenient in the doing of that work. The agent questioned whether said property was liable to taxation in Louisiana and asked for time to consult counsel. A second attempt was made to get from the agent a list of the property of plaintiff, and this second attempt proving equally fruitless, the Assessor, as required by law, made out a list of the property as best he could, and put same on his roll. Plaintiff failing to pay the tax thus assessed, the Tax Collector proceeded to enforce payment by seizure of some of the mules assessed, and plaintiff brought this suit enjoining the seizure.

We shall consider only the grounds insisted on in the brief, and shall take them up in the order in which they are presented in the brief.

First. That the assessment includes property not belonging to plaintiff, and for the taxes on which plaintiff is not responsible.

Suffice to say that plaintiff having been called upon by the Assessor to furnish a list of its property, and having failed to do so, is, by the express terms of the Revenue Act, section 14, "estopped from contesting the correctness of the assessment list filed by the Assessor."

Second. That the blacksmith tools, etc., and the merchandise were exempt from taxation.

The goods in a commissary store are property, and as such are liable to taxation; and so are tools, etc., of a blacksmith, unless they are the tools by which the taxpayer earns his living, which these are not.

Third. That a part of the taxes demanded, namely: the bridge ward tax, is not a tax properly speaking, but a local assessment, and that plaintiff's property not sharing in the benefits of this assessment cannot be made to pay same.

The essentially characteristic feature of a local assessment is that it is levied on particularized property, and not on property generally. Charnock vs. Levee Co., 38 Ann. 327. This feature is the corollary of what in theory, if not in actual practice, is the fundamental principle of the law of local assessment, that the tax should be levied on each particular piece of property in proportion to the benefit it is to derive (not supposedly only, but actually), from the expenditure of the avails of the tax. Village of Norwood vs. Baker.

The mere localness of the tax is not necessarily a distinguishing feature. Nor is the fact that the tax was imposed only after consultation of the taxpayers. Consultation of the taxpayers might have been dispensed with by the framers of the constitution in authorizing the imposition of the tax; and, on the other hand, local assessments may be, and every day are, levied without consultation of the contributors. As this tax though local is levied on property generally and irrespective of special benefit we conclude that it is not a local assessment.

Fourth. We find it difficult to reduce this ground to any single proposition; or, in fact, to be positive exactly what the contention is; so that we prefer to transcribe here the statement of it as found in the brief. This statement is as follows: --

"We now contend that the exaction of these taxes, under the peculiar facts and circumstances of this case, would be in violation of the spirit of the law in that it would operate a double taxation upon the plaintiff's property.

"It is disclosed by the record that this identical property, then situated in Gregg county, Texas, was duly assessed to this company in January, 1901, and that it was not removed from that place to this parish until the latter part of April of that year, and then only for the purpose of doing certain temporary work in the parish of Natchitoches, and was not assessed until the 24th of June of that year. 49th Ann. 401.

"It is further shown with reasonable certainty that this tax so assessed in Texas has been subsequently paid and discharged.

"Now, whilst it is a general rule, both here and elsewhere, that personal property is liable to be taxed wherever it may be situated (by which is meant that the situs rather than the domicile controls in such cases), yet the question in this case is whether this property under the circumstances of the case had any such situs, and if so whether it is to be freed from taxation here by reason of its prior assessment in the State of Texas.

"We know of no adjudicated...