International Paper Co v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts

• Decision Date: 04 March 1918
• Docket Number: No. 733,733
• Citation: 38 S.Ct. 292,246 U.S. 135,62 L.Ed. 624
• Parties: INTERNATIONAL PAPER CO. v. COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

246 U.S. 135

38 S.Ct. 292

62 L.Ed. 624

INTERNATIONAL PAPER CO.

v COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.

No. 733.

Argued Oct. 19, 1918.

Decided March 4, 1918.

[Syllabus from pages 135-136 intentionally omitted] Mr. Charles A. Snow, of Boston, Mass., for plaintiff in error.

Mr. Wm. Harold Hitchcock, of Boston, Mass., for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

[Arguments of Council on pages 136-138 intentionally omitted.]

Mr. Justice VAN DEVANTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a suit by a New York corporation to recover the amount of an excise tax assessed against it in Massachusetts for the year 1915 and paid under protest, the right of recovery being predicated on the asserted invalidity of the tax under the commerce clause of the Constitution (article 1, § 8, cl.3) and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The tax is also assailed on other grounds which will be passed without particular notice. The case is set forth in an agreed statement, in the light of which the state court has sustained the tax. 228 Mass. 101, 117 N. E. 246. The Massachusetts statutes under which the tax was imposed are as follows:

St. 1909, c. 490, pt. 3, § 56: 'Every foreign corporation shall, in each year, at the time of filing its annual certificate of condition, pay to the treasurer and receiver general, for the use of the commonwealth, an excise tax to be assessed by the tax commissioner of one fiftieth of one per cent. of the par value of its authorized capital stock as stated in its annual certificate of condition; but the amount of such excise tax shall not in any one year exceed the sum of two thousand dollars.'

St. 1914, c. 724, § 1: 'Every foreign corporation subject to the tax imposed by section fifty-six of part III of chapter four hundred and ninety of the acts of the year nineteen hundred and nine shall in each year, at the time of filing its annual certificate of condition, pay to the treasurer and receiver general, for the use of the commonwealth, in addition to the tax imposed by said section fifty-six, an excise tax to be assessed by the tax commissioner of one one hundredth of one per cent. of the par value of its authorized capital stock in excess of ten million dollars as stated in its annual certificate of condition.'

The facts shortly stated are these. The company, as before indicated, is a New York corporation. Its authorized capital stock, on which the tax was computed, is $45,000,000. Its total assets are not less than $39,000,000 or $40,000,000, of which not more than 1 3/4 per cent. are located or invested in Massachusetts. Its authorized and actual business is manufacturing and selling paper, in which connection it operates 23 paper mills 1 in Massachusetts and 22 in other states. The output of its mills is sold by it in both interstate and intrastate commerce, principally the former. In Massachusetts it maintains a selling office where two salesmen, with a bookkeeping and clerical force, negotiate sales of a part of the output to consumers in the New England states, subject to the approval of the home office in New York. About 86 per cent. of the sales negotiated through this selling office are in interstate commerce and the remainder are local to Massachusetts. The sales are made largely through long-term contracts with proprietors of newspapers whereby the company engages to supply their needs from its mills and from the output in transit at the time. No stock of goods is kept on hand in Massachusetts from which current sales are made. The executive and financial offices of the company are in New York, and none of its corporate or business activities are carried on in Massachusetts save as is here indicated. It pays local property taxes in Massachusetts on its real and personal property located there. In 1915 the assessed value of such property was $472,000 and the tax paid thereon was $8,118. The tax in question was in addition to the property tax and amounted to $5,500. It was imposed, so the state court holds, as an annual excise for the privilege of doing a local business within the state.

While the legislation under which the tax was assessed and collected was enacted in part in 1909 and in part in 1914, its operation and validity must be determined here by considering it as a whole, for the opinion of the state court not only holds that the 'maximum limitation' put on the tax by the part first enacted 'is removed' by the other, but treats the two parts as exacting a single tax based on the par value of 'the entire authorized capital' and computed as to $10,000,000 thereof at the rate of one-fiftieth of 1 per cent. and as to the excess at the rate of one one-hundredth of 1 per cent.

Cases involving the validity of state legislation of this character often have been before this court. The statutes considered have differed greatly, as have the circumstances in which they were applied, and the questions presented have varied accordingly. In disposing of these questions there has been at times some diversity of opinion among the members of the court and some of the decisions have not been in full accord with others. But the general principles which govern have come to be so well established as no longer to be open to controversy.

The subject was extensively considered in Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Kansas, 216 U. S. 1, 30 Sup. Ct. 190, 54 L. Ed. 355. A statute of Kansas was there in question. As construed by the state court, it required a foreign corporation doing an interstate and local business in that and other states to pay a license fee or excise of a given per cent. of its authorized capital for the privilege of conducting a local business in that state. After reviewing the earlier decisions this court pronounced the statute invalid as being repugnant to the commerce clause of the Constitution and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In that and two other cases (Pullman Co. v. Kansas, 216 U. S. 56, 30 Sup. Ct. 232, 54 L. Ed. 378, and Ludwig v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 216 U. S. 146, 30 Sup. Ct. 280, 54 L. Ed. 423), which were before the court at the same time it was held:

1. The power of a state to regulate the transaction of a local business within its borders by a foreign corporation—meaning a corporation of a sister state—is not unrestricted or absolute, but must be exerted in subordination to the limitations which the Constitution places on state action.

2. Under the commerce clause exclusive power to regulate interstate commerce rests in Congress, and a state statute which either directly or by its necessary operation burdens such commerce is invalid, regardless of the purpose with which it was enacted.

3. Consistently with the d e process clause, a state cannot tax property belonging to a foreign corporation and...