State v. Gehner
| Decision Date | 15 February 1927 |
| Docket Number | No. 27476.,27476. |
| Citation | 294 S.W. 1017 |
| Parties | STATE ex rel. GLOBE-DEMOCRAT PUB. CO. v. GEHNER, Assessor, et al. |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Jones. Hocker, Sullivan & Augert, of St. Louis, for relator.
Julius T. Muench and Charles S. Dolan, both of St. Louis, for respondents.
This is an original proceeding by certiorari by the Globe-Democrat Publishing Company to quash the record of the assessor and board of equalization of the city of St. Louis fixing the personal property assessment of the relator for the year 1926 at $1,006,930, which included accounts receivable due the relator June 1, 1925, in the sum of $358,180.14. Subsequently the relator filed an amended return of its taxable property in the amount of $648,749.86. This was the original amount tendered, less the accounts receivable. The assessor refused to accept the amended return and assessed the relator on the basis of its original statement of the amount of its taxable property. The relator thereupon appealed to the board of equalization of the city of St. Louis and asked that from the amount of its taxable property as fixed by the assessor there be deducted the amount of its accounts receivable and that the value of its property for the purpose of taxation be fixed at the amount of the original return less the total amount of said accounts receivable. The board of equalization rejected the relator's application and assessed its property at the total amount of the original return. The formal procedure necessary to the submission of this controversy has been complied with. The sole question for determination is whether the statute authorizes the assessor to include in the list of relator's assessable property its accounts receivable.
I. The policy of our law, constitutional and statutory, is that no property than that enumerated shall be exempt from taxation. Sections 6 and 7, art. 10, Const. Mo.; section 12753, R. S. 1919. These sweeping provisions, as we have held, were not intended to include property beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the state, as in State ex rel. Koeln v. Lesser, 237 Mo. 310, 141 S. W. 888, and Valle v. Ziegler, 84 Mo. 214; or to the capital stock of insurance companies for the taxation of which no law had been provided, as in State ex rel. Insurance Cos. v. Gehner, 280 S. W. 416. We held in short, in these cases, that to authorize property to be taxed it must by law be subjected to taxation. The relator contends that this has not been done in the instant case.
II. Accounts receivable are amounts owing to a creditor on open account. Newport Nat. Bank v. Herkimer County Nat. Bank, 225 U. S. loc. cit. 184, 32 S. Ct. 633, 56 L. Ed. 1042. They are in the nature of credits which, under the statute (section 12967, R. S. 1919) include "every claim or demand for money, interest, or other valuable thing, due, or to become due." Thus defined they are declared by the statute above cited to be personal property. As such they are proper subjects of taxation within the limitations stated.
The section of the statute (section 12766, Laws 1923, p. 375), after enumerating the property to be listed for taxation by the taxpayer, provides that he "shall return all other property not above enumerated," and in the closing sentence of the section it is further provided that every other species of property not exempt shall be returned for taxation.
As supplemental to section 12766, supra, as a further duty of the taxpayer in making a return of his taxable property, he is required to sign and make oath to the return, stating, among other things, that it contains "any money or property due him...
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