International Navigation Co. v. Commonwealth
| Decision Date | 01 October 1883 |
| Citation | 104 Pa. 38 |
| Parties | International Navigation Company <I>versus</I> The Commonwealth. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Before MERCUR, C. J., GORDON, PAXSON, TRUNKEY, STERRETT, GREEN and CLARK, JJ.
ERROR to the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin county: Of May Term 1883, No. 23.
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED
M. E. Olmsted, for the plaintiff in error.—The company, by its charter, is a railroad company; it built a railroad, and still controls and operates it indirectly. Its character is not changed merely because it exercises other franchises given by its charter. The Philadelphia and Reading R. R. Co. owns and operates colliers and barges without ceasing to be a railroad company. The spirit of the Act exempts transportation companies, which it is the policy of the state to foster; they are taxable as such, but not doubly taxed on dividends and by bonus on capital stock. But our company, under the Act of 1870, part of its charter, is expressly made "taxable only on the proportion of dividends on its capital stock." This limits, while it does not surrender, the right to tax, by declaring that the company shall be taxable when it is successful enough to declare dividends. That precludes the idea of payment of bonus on capital stock; if bonus is a tax, then we are relieved from it by virtue of our charter exemption, which was subsequent to the Act of 1868; if not a tax, that Act of 1868 is invalid, as its title is confined to "taxing corporations," &c.
Robert Snodgrass, deputy-attorney-general, and Lewis C. Cassidy, attorney-general, for the Commonwealth, cited: Commonwealth v. Pa. Coal Co., 2 Pearson 404; Jones & Nimick Mf'g Co. v. Commonwealth, 19 P. F. S. 137; Bank of Pennsylvania v. Commonwealth, 7 Harris 152; New York and Erie Railroad Company v. Sabin, 2 Casey 242; Erie Railway Company v. Commonwealth, 16 P. F. S. 84; Bourguignon Association v. Commonwealth, 2 Out. 54.
The opinion of the court was filed October 1st 1883.
The learned judge correctly held that the plaintiff in error was not a railroad company within the spirit and meaning of the Act of May 1st 1868. The short railroad which it built was auxiliary to its main business, and had been sold and transferred to another corporation. It now neither owns nor operates any railroad. Its business is operating a line of steamships. That is its main purpose and object. The incidental power given...
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