U.S. Supreme Court NASHVILLE, C. & ST. L. RY. v. WALLACE, 288 U.S. 249 (1933)

288 U.S. 249

NASHVILLE, C. & ST. L. RY. v. WALLACE, Comptroller of Treasury of Tennessee, et al. No. 176. Argued Dec. 12, 1932. Decided Feb. 6, 1933.

Appeal from the Supreme Court of the State of Tennessee.[ Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. v. Wallace 288 U.S. 249 (1933) ]

[Page 288 U.S. 249, 268]

tax property, the sum of all the rights and powers incident to ownership, necessarily includes the power to tax its constituent elements. See Bromley v. McCaughn, 280 U.S. 124, 136-138, 50 S.Ct. 46. Hence there can be no valid objection to the taxation of the exercise of any right or power incident to appellant's ownership of the gasoline, which falls short of a tax directly imposed on its use in interstate commerce, deemed forbidden in Helson v. Kentucky, supra. Here the tax is imposed on the successive exercise of two of those powers, the storage and withdrawal from storage of the gasoline. Both powers are completely exercised before use of the gasoline in interstate commerce begins. The tax imposed upon their exercise is therefore not one imposed on the use of the gasoline as an instrument of commerce, and the burden of it is too indirect and remote from the function of interstate commerce itself to transgress constitutional limitations. See Eastern Air Transport v. South Carolina Tax Commission, 285 U.S. 147, 52 S.Ct. 340.

Appellant objects that the tax violates the Fourteenth Amendment, in that it is levied as a charge for the use of the highways which appellant does not use. But the levy is a tax, not a toll or charge for use of the highways (see Carley & Hamilton v. Snook, 281 U.S. 66, 50 S.Ct. 204, 68 A.L.R. 194), and the constitutional power to levy taxes does not depend upon the enjoyment by the taxpayer of any special benefit from the use of the funds raised by taxation. Carley & Hamilton v. Snook, supra; St. Louis & Southwestern R. Co. v. Nattin, 277 U.S. 157, 159, 48 S.Ct. 438. The allegations of the bill showing that a heavier burden of taxation is imposed upon railroads than upon common carriers by motorbus, examined in the light of the applicable statutes of the state, fall short of alleging a discrimination forbidden by either the commerce clause or the Fourteenth Amendment.

Affirmed. Footnotes

Footnote 1 The procedure authorized by this statute has been extensively adopted both in this country and abroad. It is said that the uniform act is in force in sixteen of the states and Puerto Rico, and that similar statutes have been enacted in thirteen states, Hawaii, and the Philippines. For a discussion of the history of this procedural device in France, Germany, Spain, Spanish America, Scotland, England, and India, as well as in the United States, and the types of controversies in which it has been invoked, see Edwin M. Borchard, 'The Declaratory Judgment-A Needed Procedural Reform,' 28 Yale L.J. 1, 105; 'Judicial Relief from Peril and Insecurity,' 45 Harv.L.Rev. 793, 806; 'The Constitutionality of Declaratory Judgments,' 31 Columbia L.Rev. 561.