Posey v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 19 September 1918
• Citation: 96 S.E. 771
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: POSEY et al. v. COMMONWEALTH.

96 S.E. 771

POSEY et al.

v.COMMONWEALTH.

Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia.

Sept. 19, 1918.

Error to Corporation Court of City of Roanoke.

Motion by one Posey and another, as against the Commonwealth, to correct assess ment of a collateral inheritance tax. To review judgment of refusal, movants bring error. Affirmed.

Hart & Hart, of Roanoke, for plaintiffs in error.

John R. Saunders, Atty. Gen., and J. D. Hank, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., for the Commonwealth.

BURKS, J. The plaintiffs in error are the

nieces, and as such sole heirs, of A. M. Fuller, from whom they inherited real estate in this state of the appraised value of $378,050. This inheritance was assessed with collateral inheritance taxes to the state to the amount of $41,707.50, which amount was arrived at by assessing the first $50,000 at the rate of 5 per cent. the next $200,000 at the rate of 10 per cent., and the remaining $128,050 at 15 per cent This assessment was made under Acts 1916, c. 484, p. 812. The plaintiffs in error claimed that, under the act aforesaid, the assessment should have been at the flat rate of 5 per cent. on the whole $378,050, and made a motion before the corporation court of the city of Roanoke to correct the assessment, so as to make it conform to their interpretation of the statute, but the corporation court refused to change the assessment, and to its judgment of refusal tills writ of error was awarded.

It is well settled that the power of the state to impose such taxes is unlimited. Eyre v. Jacobs, 14 Grat. (55 Va.) 422, 73 Am. Dec. 367; Otis & Gleason on Inheritance Taxation, p. 3. This is not questioned, but it is insisted that the corporation court erred in its construction of the language of the statute under which the tax is imposed.

It is one of the fundamental rules of construction of statutes that the intention of the Legislature is to be gathered from a view of the whole and every part of the statute taken and compared together, giving to every word and every part of the statute, if possible, its due effect and meaning, and to the words used their ordinary and popular meaning, unless it plainly appears that they were used in some other sense. If the intention of the Legislature can be thus discovered, it is not permissible to add to or subtract from the words used in the statute. Tyson v. Scott, 116 Va. 243, 81 S. E. 57; Funkhouser v. Spahr, 102 Va. 306, 46 S. E. 378; Sherwood v. Atlantic & D. R. Co., 94 Va. 291, 301, 26 S. E. 943; Hoover v. Saunders, 104 Va. 783, 52 S. E. 657; Fox v. Commonwealth, 16 Grat. (57 Va.) 1; Postal Tel. Co. v. Norfolk & W. R. Co., 88 Va. 920, 925, 14 S. E. 803.

The statute under consideration, so far as the same need be quoted, is as follows:

" * * * where any estate in the commonwealth of any decedent shall pass under a will or under the laws regulating descents and distributions, to any person, or to or for the use of any person, the estate so passing shall be subject to a tax at the rate of five per centum on every hundred dollars' value thereof: Pro-I vided, that estates passing to or for the use ofthe grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, husband, wife, brother, sister or lineal descendant of such decedent shall be subject to a tax of one per centum on every hundred dollars' value thereof in excess of fifteen thousand dollars. * * * The foregoing rates are for convenience termed the primary rates. When the amount of the market value of such property or interest exceeds fifteen thousand dollars, the rate of tax upon such excess shall be as follows:

"(1) Upon all in excess of fifteen thousand dollars up to fifty thousand dollars, at the primary rates.

"(2) Upon all in excess of fifty thousand dollars and up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, two times the primary...