Worth v. Comm'rs of Ashe Cnty

• Decision Date: 31 January 1880
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: DAVID WORTH v. COMMISSIONERS OF ASHE COUNTY.

82 N.C. 420

33 Am.Rep. 692

DAVID WORTH

v.COMMISSIONERS OF ASHE COUNTY.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

January Term, 1880.

APPLICATION for Injunction heard at Fall Term, 1879, of ASHE Superior Court, before Schenck, J.

The plaintiff is a citizen of Ashe county and owns three hundred and sixty-four shares of stock in the bank of Abingdon chartered and doing business in the state of Virginia. The stock in the bank is taxed by the laws of Virginia, and the defendant commissioners have listed the same for county and state taxes and placed the list in the hands of the sheriff of the county for collection. The plaintiff asks that defendants and their agents be restrained from collecting the said tax, and for judgment that the assessment be declared invalid and without authority of law. The defendants demurred to the complaint, in that, the matter therein set forth is not sufficient in law to enable the plaintiff to maintain his action. The court overruled the demurrer, and granted the injunction, from which the defendants appealed.

Messrs. Mason & Devereux and G. V. Strong, for plaintiff .

Attorney General, for state and county .

SMITH, J. C.

This case differs from Belo v. Com'rs, ante 415, in a single feature. The plaintiff Belo residing in Forsyth county, held stock in the North Carolina railroad company, a domestic corporation, and claimed relief on the ground that the company itself returned and paid taxes upon all its taxable estate, and hence the tax on his shares was cumulative upon the same property and not uniform. The plaintiff, in the present case, holds three hundred and sixty-four shares of capital stock in the bank of Abingdon, a foreign corporation, existing under the laws of, and doing business in, the state of Virginia, and insists upon their exemption for the reason that all the corporate property is outside the limits of the state, and his stock is not subject to its taxing power. The principle involved in both cases is substantially the same, and is so fully examined in the other case as to require little to be added to what is there said.

In Whitehall v. County of Northampton, 49 Penn. St. Rep., 519, the question came up for consideration and the supreme court declared: “The defendant being a citizen of this state, it is clear that he is subject personally to its power to tax, and that all his property accompanying his person, or falling legitimately within the territorial jurisdiction of the state, is equally within its authority. The interest which an owner of shares has in the stock of a corporation is personal. Whithers...