Wells Fargo Co v. State of Nevada

• Decision Date: 16 December 1918
• Docket Number: No. 40,40
• Parties: WELLS FARGO & CO. v. STATE OF NEVADA
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

248 U.S. 165

39 S.Ct. 62

63 L.Ed. 190

WELLS FARGO & CO.

v STATE OF NEVADA.

No. 40.

Argued Nov. 14, 1918.

Decided Dec. 16, 1918.

Messrs. Charles W. Stockton, of New York City, Henry M. Hoyt, of San Francisco, Cal., and Harry S. Marx, of New York City, for plaintiff in error.

Mr. William C. Prentiss, of Washington, D. C., for the State of Nevada.

Mr. Justice VAN DEVANTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

This was an action to enforce a tax levied in Humboldt county, Nevada, against the express company. Several objections were interposed, some presenting local and others federal questions, but all were overruled and payment of the tax directed. 38 Nev. 505, 150 Pac. 836. This writ of error was allowed prior to the Act of September 6, 1916, c. 448, 39 Stat. 726.

The federal questions are all that we can consider, and they are: Whether the tax was laid on the privilege or act of engaging in interstate commerce, whether the tax proceedings were without due process of law and whether they otherwise were such as to make the tax a burden on interstate commerce.

The company is a Colorado corporation engaged in the express business in this and other countries. One of its lines extends through Humboldt and other counties in Nevada, over the Southern Pacific Railroad, and is used in both intrastate and interstate commerce, but principally the latter. The tax was for the year 1910.

As construed by the state court, the statute¹ under which the tax was imposed does not provide for a privilege or franchise tax, but only for an ad valorem property tax. Acting under the statute, a state board valued the company's personal property, tangible and intangible, used in its express business within the state at $300 per mile of line; and it then became the duty of the assessor of Humboldt county to enter or list on the assessment roll at that valuation so much of the line as was in his county. In making the entry he accurately gave the length of the line in the county, the railroad over which the same was operated and the valuation fixed by the state board, but inaccurately described the property as consisting of the right to carry on an express business there.

Looking only at that entry there is strong ground for saying that the tax was laid on the privilege or act of doing an express business which was principally interstate. On the other hand, the action of the state board, on which the assessment concededly was predicated, indicates that what was taxed was the company's property in Humboldt county. The difference is vital, for, consistently with the commerce clause of the federal Constitution, the state could not tax the privilege or act of engaging in interstate commerce, but could tax the company's property within the state, although chiefly employed in such commerce. Adams Express Co. v. Ohio, 165 U. S. 194, 220, 17 Sup. Ct. 305, 41 L. Ed. 683; s. c., 166 U. S. 185, 218, 17 Sup. Ct. 604, 41 Ed. 965; Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Ry. Co. v. Texas, 210 U. S. 217, 225-227, 28 Sup. Ct. 638, 52 L. Ed. 1031; Cudahy Packing Co. v. Minnesota, 246 U. S. 450, 453, 38 Sup. Ct. 373, 62 L. Ed. 827.

The company insists that the state is concluded by the entry on the assessment roll. But the state court, as shown in its opinion, rejects that view and holds, in effect, that the entry must be construed in the light of the statute and the action of the state board, and that when this is done it is apparent that the tax was not laid on the privilege or act of engaging in interstate commerce, but on the company's property within the county. We perceive no ground for disturbing that ruling. In so far as it turns on the authority of the state board and the assessor under the statute and the relative effect to be given to their acts it is not reviewable here, and in so far as it relates to what really was the subject of the tax we think it...