Kennedy v. Comm'r of Corp. & Taxation

• Decision Date: 29 June 1926
• Citation: 256 Mass. 426,152 N.E. 747
• Parties: KENNEDY v. COMMISSIONER OF CORPORATIONS AND TAXATION.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

256 Mass. 426

152 N.E. 747

KENNEDY

v.COMMISSIONER OF CORPORATIONS AND TAXATION.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

June 29, 1926.

Appeal by Respondent from Order of Superior Court, Middlesex County, Overruling Demurrer ; N. P. Brown, Judge.

Exceptions of Petitioner from Superior Court, Middlesex County; McLeod, Judge.

Proceeding by Agnes S. Kennedy against Henry F. Long, as Commissioner of Corporations and Taxation, for abatement of portion of income tax. A demurrer to the complaint was overruled, and respondent appealed. On complainant's exceptions to rulings and refusals to rule. Exceptions sustained.F. M. Qua, of Lowell, for complainant.

A. Lincoln, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.

RUGG, C. J.

The complainant seeks an abatement of a portion of the income tax assessed upon her for the year 1921. G. L. c. 62, § 47. She removed from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts on October 8, 1921, never having theretofore been an inhabitant of this Commonwealth. Early in 1922 she filed a return of her income for 1921 as required by law, whereby were shown (1) her entire income received during the calendar year 1921, and (2) the portion of her income received during the period of her being an inhabitant of this Commonwealth, namely, from October 8 to December 3u. A demurrer to the Complaint was overruled. The defendant answered and the case was heard on its merits, the only evidence being the deposition of the complainant. Several requests for rulings by the complainant were denied, those of the respondent were granted, and a finding was entered for the respondent. The case is before us on exceptions to these rulings and refusals to rule. The single question for decision is whether the complainant, having become an inhabitant of this Commonwealth during the year 1921 and remaining such inhabitant after the first of the following January, was taxable for all the income received by her during the year 1921, even though received in large part in a foreign state from property in no part located in this Commonwealth during time before she had become an inhabitant of this Commonwealth.

The Income Tax Law, G. L. c. 62, establishes a property and not an excise tax. Hart v. Tax Commissioner, 240 Mass. 37, 132 N. E. 621. There is an explicit description in section 25 of those persons made subject to the tax, expressed in these words:

‘Every individual who is an inhabitant of the Commonwealth at any time between January first and June thirtieth, both inclusive, in any year * * * [with other persons not here material], * * * shall be subject to the taxes imposed by this chapter. * * *’

Provisions are found in other sections, defining the income which is subject to taxation. It is said in section 1:

‘Income of the classes described in subsections (a), (b), (c) and (e) receivedby any inhabitant of the Commonwealth during the preceding calendar year, shall be taxed. * * *’

In section 5 are these words:

‘Income of the following classes received by any inhabitant of the Commonwealth during the preceding calendar year shall be taxed. * * *’

By section 11:

‘If any inhabitant of the Commonwealth receives income from one or more trustees, none of whom is an inhabitant of the Commonwealth or has derived his appointment from a court of the Commonwealth, such income shall be subject to the taxes imposed by this chapter, according to the nature of the income received by the trustees.’

[3] The words ‘inhabitant of the Commonwealth’ are used in these three sections as descriptive of the income made subject to the tax. This is manifestly their sense in section 11. The income there described plainly must be received by one at the time an inhabitant of the Commonwealth and cannot be otherwise included within the sweep of the tax law. By analogy the Legislature would naturally make the same provision respecting other kinds of income described in sections 1 and 5 and made subject to the tax. The use in the context of those two sections dealing with the same matter, namely, income subject to the tax, of the same words, ‘inhabitant of the Commonwealth,’ indicates that they there carry the same signification. Other considerations reenforce this view. The words hardly would be here employed as descriptive of the persons subject to the tax because that matter is dealt with comprehensively by the separate section 25. They would be here inapt and contradictory as descriptive of the persons subject to the tax because in conflict with section 25, which restricts such persons to those inhabitants of the Commonwealth only during the first six months of the year when the tax is assessed, while the words in sections 1 and 5 are not so restricted. It is a general canon of statutory construction not to treat any of the words of a statute as superfluous or unnecessary but to give to all its words some meaning, so that, so far as possible, it shall be a consistent and harmonious whole. The only was to accomplish that result is to regard the words ‘inhabitant of the Commonwealth’ in sections 1 and 5 as descriptive of the income made subject to the tax and not of the persons liable to pay such tax. Thus the income made subject to the tax by sections 1 and 5 is that received by persons at the time of receipt inhabitants of the Commonwealth. This construction puts the income described in section 11 and that described in section 1 and in section 5 on the same...