Schuylkill Trust Co v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Decision Date11 November 1935
Docket NumberNo. 3,3
Citation56 S.Ct. 31,296 U.S. 113,80 L.Ed. 91
PartiesSCHUYLKILL TRUST CO. v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
CourtU.S. Supreme Court

Mr. John Robert Jones, of Philadelphia, Pa., for appellant.

Mr. Manuel Kraus, of Pittsburgh, Pa., for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Justice ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.

The appellant, a trust company organized under the laws of Pennsylvania, challenges a statute of the state as construed and applied in the assessment of a tax for the year 1930, denominated a tax on shares. From a settlement made against the company by the Department of Revenue an appeal was taken to the court of common pleas of Dauphin county which, after trial without a jury, entered judgment in favor of the commonwealth.1 The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the judgment.2 The appellant's contention is that the act as so construed and applied by the Department and the courts discriminates against United States government bonds, bonds of federal instrumentalities, and national bank stocks included in the appellant's assets. The appellee replies that the tax is upon the shares of stock as such, and not upon the assets which represent their value; that, in fact, no tax whatever, much less a discriminatory tax, has been levied upon exempt assets of the company.

Prior to the year 1907, Pennsylvania trust companies were liable for what is known as a capital stock tax, levied upon the corporation. In the administration of that form of exaction certain securities, such as United States bonds and national bank shares, are eliminated from tax by deduction of their value from the value of the total assets of the corporations which own them. The deduction of exempt securities is made to avoid double taxation; the theory being that the shares issued by a corporation and its capital stock are identical so that taxation of the one is taxation of the other.3

On June 13, 1907, the General Assembly adopted an act prescribing another method of taxation in the case of trust companies. Its pertinent provisions are copied in the margin.4 This statute in terms lays a tax upon shares rather than upon corporate assets. The value of each share is to be ascertained by adding the value of capital stock paid in, surplus, and undivided profits, and dividing the total by the number of outstanding shares. Thus the exaction is measured by the value of the company's net assets. This involves the exclusion of corporate liabilities from the measure of value to which the rate is to be applied.5 By sucessive amendments it was di- rected that the value of each share of stock should be ascertained by adding together so much of the amount of capital stock paid in, surplus, and undivided profits as is not invested in the shares of stock of corporations liable to pay to the commonwealth a capital stock tax or tax on shares, or relieved from the payment of capital stock tax or tax on shares, and dividing the sum by the number of outstanding shares.6 These amendments were combined with the original act, in a single statute of April 25, 1929.7

Obviously, the theory of the amendments was that as trust companies, so long as they had been liable for capital stock tax, had been exempted from payment of tax reckoned upon assets which had already paid a tax or were exempt from tax, that is, the stock of corporations of Pennsylvania which had paid a capital stock tax or whose shares had been taxed or had been exempted from tax, it was proper, in levying a tax upon the shares of trust companies reckoned upon the net assets of those companies, to exempt from such net assets so much thereof as represented shares of corporations which had already paid a tax or, under the policy of the commonwealth had been exempted.

The impost, as laid by the act of 1907, was a true tax on shares, and not a tax upon the assets of trust companies. Such an exaction is not a tax upon United States securities owned by the corporation whose shares are taxed or upon securities exempt from taxation because issued by instrumentalities of the federal government.8

It will be observed that by the amendments to the act of 1907 the measure of the tax is not in any sense the value of the shares as such, but a value reflected by so much of the net assets as is not represented by shares of Pennsylvania corporations already taxed or exempt from tax. In the administration of the act as amended, the procedure which has been followed and approved9 is first to deduct the liabilities from the total assets, thus arriving at the net assets. The theory has been the exempt shares owned by the trust company must be shown to have been actually purchased out of capital stock or surplus in order to obtain a deduction of their full value from the gross assets. If the company is unable to demonstrate that they were purchased in that manner, then a proportional method of deduction is adopted. This is to apply to the taxed value of all such exempt securities a fraction the numerator of which is the net assets and the denominator the gross assets. The result of applying this fraction to the taxed value of exempt shares is said to give the proportion of those exempt shares attributable to capital, surplus, and undivided profits, and the quotient is accordingly deducted from the value of the net assets to obtain the measure of the tax on all the shares, and this, divided by the number of outstanding shares, gives the measure of the tax for each share. In the instant case, the trust company held amongst its assets shares of Pennsylvania corporations, exempt from tax, of the value of $135,787. It also held shares of the Philadelphia National Bank of the value of $20,202. These were found by the Department of Revenue to have been taxed at a total taxable value of $71,373. Applying the fractional formula mentioned, it was found that $8,886 of their taxable value should be attributed to capital, surplus, and undivided profits, and deducted from the amount of the net assets. As the net assets had been ascertained to be $467,714, the deduction brought this figure down to $458,028, to which the rate of tax or 5 mills was applied.

It should be stated that under the act the corporation is required to make a report as the basis for the calculation of the tax, and, upon that report, the Department of Revenue settles the tax which is assessed against the corporation. The trust company, and not the stockholders, is liable in the first instance for the tax. Though given the right to pay the tax from its funds or to collect the amount from its stockholders, neither the company nor the commonwealth is given any lien upon the stock for the amount of the tax. As the obligation to pay the commonwealth is that of the company, its interest and its right to contest are beyond question.

In specifications of objection filed with its appeal from the tax settlement in the court of common pleas, the trust company insisted that all exempt shares (including the shares of the Philadelphia National Bank) should be deducted from the gross assets in full. This would exempt their full value rather than a proportion of their taxed value as ascertained by the use of the proportional method above described. The further objection was made that the method of settlement adopted resulted in discrimination against exempt securities issued by the United States or other federal instrumentalities, and that these should have been deducted at their full value from the gross assets before any computation of the tax. The common pleas court overruled these objections (without discussing the treatment of the national bank shares), saying, with respect to United States bonds and like exempt securities, that as the tax was a tax upon shares, and not upon the assets of the trust company, those securities had not in fact been taxed. In affirming the judgment, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania said that as the specifications of objections had not covered the point as to national bank shares, and the court below had not discussed that matter, it was not open in the appellate court. As respects United States bonds, and other federal securities, it concurred in the view of the lower court.

First. The appellant insists that as merely a portion of the net assets of the corporation is taken as the basis or measure of the tax it cannot be upon the shares as shares. The appellee relies upon the statement of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania that the levy is upon the shares and no upon assets. The appellant asks us to find to the contrary. We give great weight to the characterization of a tax, or the interpretation of a state law, emanating from the highest court of the state, but where a federal question is involved we are not bound by the label attached to the tax or the character ascribed to the law. We must determine for ourselves the true nature of the tax by ascertaining its operation and effect.10

It is clear that the tax is not measured by each shareholder's aliquot proportion of all the assets of the company. If amongst those assets are found shares of stock of Pennsylvania corporations which, or whose shares, have been declared exempt by the state, this exemption is effected in the instant case by taking them wholly or partially out of the net assets which are the base for the tax. The appellant says this demonstrates that the tax is one upon assets. If the appellant is right, the exaction operates as a discrimination against government securities and other assets exempt under federal law. Missouri v. Gehner, 281 U.S. 313, 50 S.Ct. 326, 74 L.Ed. 870. If the tax is one truly upon that independent property evidenced by the ownership of a share of corporate stock, its collection does not discriminate against United State securities.11

We think that the issue of discrimination is not to be resolved by a choice between the two contentions as to the nature of the tax. The point is that the state has chosen a portion only...

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