Johnston, Revenue Agent v. Jackson Oil Refining Co

• Decision Date: 21 December 1914
• Citation: 66 So. 777,108 Miss. 416
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: JOHNSTON, REVENUE AGENT, v. JACKSON OIL REFINING CO

66 So. 777

108 Miss. 416

JOHNSTON, REVENUE AGENT, v. JACKSON OIL REFINING CO

Supreme Court of Mississippi

December 21, 1914

October 1914

APPEAL from the circuit court of Hinds county. HON. W. A. HENRY Judge.

Suit by J. C. Johnston, revenue agent, against the Jackson Oil &amp Refining Company. From an order sustaining a demurrer to the declaration, plaintiff appeals.

The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Affirmed.

Jas. R. McDowell, for appellant.

Green & Green and Hirsh, Dent & Landau, for appellee.

OPINION

COOK, J.

The state revenue agent filed this suit against the Jackson Oil & Refining Company to recover alleged unpaid privilege taxes. The declaration avers that the defendant paid less than the taxes levied by chapter 99, Laws of 1912, on cotton seed oil mills, for the years 1912, 1913, and 1914; that defendant should have paid three hundred and fifty dollars per year for each of said years, whereas it had paid, only two hundred and fifty dollars per year. The declaration proceeds upon the theory that the capacity of the mill must be determined, and is fixed, by the "number and capacity of each hydraulic press installed," or, to speak more accurately, that is the construction of the statute which counsel for appellant insists upon. In other words, we understand that the revenue agent seeks to recover because the oil mill has a capacity, measured by the capacity of the hydraulic presses installed in its mill, of one hundred tons, whereas it had paid only on a capacity of eighty tons. A demurrer to the declaration was sustained by the trial court, and the revenue agent appeals.

We have stated the position or contention of the revenue agent, and will now state the contention of appellee. One of appellee's counsel insists that the statute imposes a privilege on the capacity of the mill actually employed in the business; that the privilege is not levied on the unemployed capacity of the mill. We understand this contention of appellee to be, conceding that the mill in question had an equipment by which is could have crushed and manufactured one hundred tons, it was nevertheless only required to pay on that portion of its potential capacity which it actually employed.

We do not believe that either of the above-mentioned contentions is sound. The capacity of the mill cannot be arbitrarily determined and fixed by the capacity of the "hydraulic presses installed, " and such was not the purpose of the legislature. If the actual capacity of the entire instrumentalities of the mill was less than one hundred tons it was not the intention of the legislature to levy a tax measured alone by the capacity of one of the instrumentalities, to wit, "the capacity of the hydraulic presses installed." It is easily conceivable that an oil mill might install presses with a combined capacity to take care of two hundred tons of seed per day of twenty-four hours; whereas the mill, by the employment of all its other facilities, could not possibly crush more than...