Opinion · Supreme Court of the United States

Welch v. Henry

305 U.S. 134

Type
Opinion
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Jurisdiction
Federal
Date
1938-12-19
Topic
general

How later courts describe this case

  • suggesting that a tax on income received two years earlier approached but did not exceed “the limit of permissible retroactivity”
  • noting that some entities “may no longer be in business” when the state attempts to collect additional taxes from them
  • invalidating administrative order as "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion," see 5 U. S. C. § 706(2)(A
  • sustaining retroactive Wisconsin statute that taxed shareholder dividends paid two years before statute’s enactment
  • noting that landowners lack vested rights against zoning changes
  • upholding Wisconsin law providing for retroactive application of graduated tax on dividends
  • upholding retroactive imposition of tax despite the absence of advance notice of the legislation
  • allowing a graduated gross income tax less an arbitrary deduction of $750

Citator

Welch v. Henry has been questioned or limited by later authorities: relies on overruled authority: 56 S. Ct. 252 (overruled by Madden v. Kentucky, 309 U.S. 83 (1940)). Read them before relying on it. 505 later decisions cite it.

Authority status
caution
Cited by
505 opinions

Headnotes

  1. Constitutional Law — Equal Protection A state legislature's decision to impose a tax on a distinct class of previously untaxed income, at rates and with deductions not shown to be unrelated to an equitable distribution of the tax burden, does not deny equal protection, because any classification of taxation is permissible if it bears a reasonable relation to a legitimate end of governmental action, and the equal protection clause does not require a state to maintain rigid rules of equal taxation, resort to close distinctions, or maintain a precise scientific uniformity. 305 U.S. at 142-144
  2. Constitutional Law — Equal Protection The validity of a retroactive alteration of a tax scheme, so far as equal protection is concerned, must be determined as in the case of any other tax, by ascertaining whether the thing taxed falls within a distinct class which may rationally be treated differently from other classes; the equal protection clause does not preclude a legislature from changing its mind in making an otherwise permissible choice of subjects of taxation, and a tax is not a denial of equal protection merely because it is retroactive. 305 U.S. at 144-145
  3. Constitutional Law — Equal Protection In the absence of facts tending to show that a taxing act is, in its purpose or effect, a hostile or oppressive discrimination against the class taxed, the statute does not deny equal protection, even where the taxed class consists of recipients of dividends who had previously escaped all taxation of that income. 305 U.S. at 146
  4. Constitutional Law — Due Process A tax is not necessarily unconstitutional because it is retroactive; since no citizen enjoys immunity from the burden of taxation, its retroactive imposition does not necessarily infringe due process, and it is not enough to challenge the tax that the taxable event antedated the statute. In each case it is necessary to consider the nature of the tax and the circumstances in which it is laid to determine whether its retroactive application is so harsh and oppressive as to transgress the constitutional limitation. 305 U.S. at 146-147
  5. Constitutional Law — Due Process The invalidity of retroactive gift taxes rested on the ground that the nature or amount of the tax could not reasonably have been anticipated by the taxpayer at the time of the particular voluntary act made the taxable event, since the donor might have refrained from making the gift had he anticipated the tax; unlike the case of gifts, it cannot be assumed that stockholders would refuse to receive dividends even if they knew the receipt would later be subjected to a new tax or an increased old one. 305 U.S. at 147-148
  6. Constitutional Law — Due Process Taxpayers cannot justly assert surprise or complain of arbitrary action in the retroactive apportionment of tax burdens to income when this is done by the legislature at the first opportunity after knowledge of the nature and amount of the income is available; the "recent transactions" to which a tax law may be retroactively applied include the receipt of income during the year of the legislative session preceding that of enactment. 305 U.S. at 149-150
WELCHv. HENRY,305 U.S. 134(1938)
59 S.Ct. 121
WELCHv. HENRY ET AL.
APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF WISCONSIN.
No. 13.
Argued October 13, 1938.
Decided November 21, 1938.
1. Under the income tax law of Wisconsin in force in 1933 and since, the amount of dividends received by a taxpayer from corporations whose "principal business" is "attributable to Wisconsin," i.e., corporations which themselves have paid a Wisconsin income tax upon 50% or more of their total net income, may be deducted from gross income along with other deductions, in computing his taxable net income. A taxpayer, in his return for the year 1933, filed in March, 1935, made these deductions, the aggregate of which was such that he had no taxable income for that year. A year later, a statute was passed laying a tax on all dividends received in 1933 which, when received, were deductible from gross income. The taxpayer was thus required to pay a tax of $545 on his dividend income in 1933.Heldconsistent with equal protection and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 142, 146. 2. The fact that the dividends were taxed at a different rate from that applied to other income in 1933 and were given the benefit of but a single deduction of $750, while recipients of other types of income in that year were permitted to deduct specified items of interest, taxes, business losses and donations, did not render the dividend tax repugnant to the equal protection clause. P. 142. The dividends constituted a class of untaxed income, received from a specified category of corporations; and the legislature could have concluded that a substantial part of this income had borne no tax burden at its source in the earnings of the corporations, since corporations were not required to pay a tax on that part of their income allocable to business carried on or property located without the State. The selection of such income for taxation at rates and with deductions not shown to be unrelated to an equitable distribution of the tax burden is not a denial of the equal protection commanded by the Fourteenth Amendment. P. 143. 3. The distribution of a tax burden by placing it in part on a special class which, by reason of the taxing policy of the State, has escaped all taxation during the taxable period is not a denial of equal protection; nor is the tax any more a denial of equal protection because retroactive. P. 144. 4. So far as equal protection is concerned, the validity of retroactive alteration of a tax scheme must be determined, as in the case of any other tax, by ascertaining whether the thing taxed falls withinPage 135a distinct class which may rationally be treated differently from other classes. P. 145. 5. In the absence of facts tending to show that the taxing act is a hostile or oppressive discrimination against the recipients of dividends who have hitherto escaped all taxation of them, it does not deny equal protection. P. 146. 6. A tax is not necessarily in violation of the due process clause because retroactive. In each case it is necessary to consider the nature of the tax and the circumstances in which it is laid before it can be said that its retroactive application is so harsh and oppressive as to transgress the constitutional limitation. P. 146. Casesdistinguishedin which this Court has held invalid the taxation of gifts made and completely vested before the enactment of the taxing statute, decision there having been rested upon the ground that the nature or amount of the tax could not reasonably have been anticipated by the taxpayer at the time of the particular voluntary act which the statute later made the taxable event. Unlike the case of gifts which the donor might have refrained from making had he anticipated the tax, it cannot be assumed that stockholders would refuse to receive dividends even if they knew that the receipt would later be subjected to a new tax or to the increase of an old one, and the objection to the present tax is addressed only to the particular inconvenience of the taxpayer in being called upon, after the customary time for levy and payment of the tax has passed, to bear a governmental burden of which it is said he had no warning and which he did not anticipate. 7. Taxpayers can not justly assert surprise or complain of arbitrary action in the retroactive apportionment of tax burdens to income when this is done by the legislature at the first opportunity after knowledge of the nature and amount of the income is available. P. 149. In the present case the returns of income received in 1933 were filed and became available in March, 1934. The next succeeding session of the legislature at which tax legislation could be considered was in 1935, when the challenged statute was passed. P. 150.226 Wis. 595;277 N.W. 183, affirmed.
APPEAL from a judgment sustaining an income tax, the amount of
which the present appellant paid under protest and sued to
recover. The trial court had at first overruled a demurrer to the
complaint. The ruling was reversed by the Supreme Court of
Wisconsin on a first appeal. The trial court then sustained a
demurrer to an
Page 136
amended complaint. Judgment of the Supreme Court affirming this
action is the subject of the present appeal to this Court.
Mr. John M. Campbellfor appellant.

There was no reasonable ground for classifying the recipients of dividends separately and subjecting them to a separate and distinct tax.

If this so-called "exemption" from normal tax can be made the basis of a classification at all, there should be some relation between the amount of taxes exacted from this class and the benefits which have accrued to them by reason of having been allowed the deduction for purposes of normal tax, particularly when the exemption is the only basis for the classification.

The tax here involved is measured by nothing except the amount of dividends received and bears not the slightest relation to the net income of the taxpayer from all sources, which is the subject of the normal tax, or to the amount of tax he would have been required to pay had dividends been included in the determination of his income subject to normal tax. Whatever may be said in favor of this classification for purposes of a tax measured by including dividends in taxable income during 1933, there is gross discrimination in subjecting that class to a tax measured only by the amount of dividends regardless of the effect of other transactions of the taxpayer upon his taxable income, or upon the amount of normal tax which he would have been required to pay had the dividends been included in his income subject to such normal tax. This manifestly results in great discrepancies between the amount of dividend tax and the normal tax upon a like amount of net income. The appellant, who received dividends of $12,156.10, was called upon for a tax of $556.84. Normal income tax and surtax upon that same amount of net income would have been $468.42 less his exemption.Page 137

It is true, as was pointed out by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, that this is not necessarily a fair comparison, because the taxpayer's dividends might come in on top of other income and, if subjected to normal tax, result in a higher tax than the tax actually imposed. Here, however, and in the case of many other taxpayers, the existence of business losses, the payment of taxes and interest, and other deductions, give the taxpayer a net loss for purposes of normal tax, no part of which is allowed to be set off against the tax now imposed.

The true nature of the tax, as a property tax, or an excise, makes it arbitrary and discriminatory because of the graduated rates.

The tax is not one measured by a balancing of the net results of all the taxpayer's business transactions for the year. It is not a tax upon income, meaning thereby the gain or profit to the taxpayer from all of his business transactions as that term is used, for instance, in connection with federal income tax or the Wisconsin normal income tax. It is not laid upon what remains when "all expenses are paid and losses adjusted, and after the recipient of the income is free to use it as he chooses."PeckCo. v.Lowe,247 U.S. 165,175;Redfieldv.Fisher,135 Or. 180;Shafferv.Carter,252 U.S. 37,51;New York exrel. Cohnv.Graves,300 U.S. 308,313.

Even if it is true that the gross income from dividends may be considered as net income, the fact remains that when you measure the tax by receipts, whether gross or net, from some particular source, you are taxing something other than the net income of the taxpayer from all his activities during the taxable year.UnitedStatesv.Hudson,299 U.S. 498, distinguished.

When the real nature and effect of the tax are considered, it is to all practical intents and purposes a property tax. There is only one measure of it, the amount of dividends received by the taxpayer from stock. ToPage 138pick out this one source of receipts and levy a tax upon them is to directly tax the property from which the receipts are secured.

It is assumed that there may be a valid classification of property for purposes of taxation, but the application to the property in that class of varying rates results in an indefensible discrimination. The taxpayer who owns a thousand shares of stock and receives the dividends thereon, by that fact alone is required to pay a greater number of dollars per share owned than another taxpayer who owns but a hundred shares of that same stock.Stewart Dry-Goods Co. v.Lewis,294 U.S. 550.

The case for the constitutionality of this tax is not improved by considering it as an excise tax. It is a tax which bears no relation to the ability of the taxpayer to pay or to his net income from all sources. It is a tax upon the receipts, whether gross or net, from a particular source.Schusterv.Henry,218 Wis. 506.

The retroactive effect of the tax renders it arbitrary and discriminatory.

It purports to assess a tax based upon something that happened in the second preceding year and goes much farther in that regard than any such taxing measures that have come to our attention. Distinguishing:Florida Central R. Co. v.Reynolds,183 U.S. 471;Hechtv.Malley,265 U.S. 144;Flintv.Stone TracyCo.,220 U.S. 107. It is simply a tax authorized and levied during 1935 upon dividends which under the long existing policy of the State had not been subjected to tax at all at the time they were received.

Its retrospective operation accentuates the discriminatory nature of the tax. Even if it were entirely proper to classify recipients of dividends in a separate class and subject them to a separate and distinct tax, it would not follow that it would likewise be proper to constitute aPage 139separate class composed of those who had received dividends in the past.

The present tax was imposed in 1935 upon dividends received in 1933. During 1933, the taxpayer had no intimation that he would be called upon for a tax out of them. He filed his return in March of 1934 reporting the receipt of these dividends and still no tax was demanded from him on account thereof. The entire year 1934 went by and still no tax was demanded. In the meantime his ability to pay had been subjected to the results of whatever business transactions he had during 1934. In March of 1935 the State changed its mind and taxed these 1933 dividends: "If income from dividends received in 1933 were properly subject to taxation why not those of 1932 or 1931? Why not go back to 1929 when dividends were many and large, instead of 1933, when they were few and small?" (Fowler, J., dissenting,223 Wis. 319,332.)

Distinguishing:Millikenv.United States,283 U.S. 15;United Statesv.Hudson,299 U.S. 498. Retroactivity of the taxing statute to that extent and over that period of time is in itself enough to violate the Federal Constitution.Nicholsv.Coolidge,274 U.S. 531,542;Blodgettv.Holden,275 U.S. 142;Untermyerv.Anderson,276 U.S. 440;Helveringv.Helmholz,296 U.S. 93;Whitev.Poor,296 U.S. 98;Coolidgev.Long,282 U.S. 582.

In setting up as a test, that the legislature can go back "to the most recent year for which they have returns furnishing a basis upon which to estimate the total return of the tax to the State," the court below has substituted the convenience of the State for the rights of the taxpayer as the standard to be complied with. The returns referred to were apparently the returns for the purpose of determining normal income tax which all Wisconsin taxpayers are required to file on the 15th day of March in each year. The returns covering income forPage 1401934 were due on March 15, 1935. Wisconsin Statutes, § 71.09(4). Section 6 of Ch. 15 of the Laws of 1935 was approved on the 14th day of March, 1935, the day before the returns covering income for 1934 were due. It was published and became effective March 27th, twelve days after the returns were due. Under the rule fixed by the court this tax, merely because of its retroactive features, would have been invalid had it been passed the day after it was approved.

It is apparent that if you go back far enough with a retroactive tax, you must come to a point where there is so little relation between the income during the period involved and the taxpayer's ability to pay, or any other reasonable ground for demanding a tax, that the effect is an arbitrary imposition which is beyond the legislature's power. That point has been reached when the legislature purports to impose a tax upon receipts for the second preceding year, a period for which taxes have already been levied and paid.

It is difficult to see how the tax is anything but a property tax upon the receipts themselves. When the dividends reached the taxpayer's hands by transactions upon which the State was not then claiming any tax, they became so much property in his possession and no different from other dollars in the hands of other taxpayers that had come in some other manner. The singling out of this property in the hands of the appellant for taxation when other dollars were not taxed is an arbitrary discrimination.Messrs. Leo E. Vaudreuil, Deputy Attorney General of Wisconsin, andHarold H. Persons, Assistant Attorney General, with whomMessrs. Orland S. Loomis, Attorney General, andJoseph E. Messerschmidt, Assistant Attorney General, were on the brief, for appellees.Page 141
MR. JUSTICE STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.
This appeal presents the question whether the Act of the Wisconsin Legislature of March 27, 1935, which imposed a tax on corporate dividends received by appellant in 1933 at rates different from those applicable in that year to other types of income and without deductions which were allowed in computing the tax on other income, infringes the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The statute of Wisconsin in force in 1933 and since imposes a tax on net income at graduated rates. Wisconsin Stat. 1933, c. 71. Appellant, a resident of Wisconsin, received in 1933 gross income of $13,383.26, of which $12,156.10 was dividends received from corporations whose "principal business" was "attributable to Wisconsin" within the meaning of the taxing statute. By §71.04(4), Wisconsin Stat. 1933,1such dividends were deductible from gross income in computing net taxable income, together with other items, including taxes, interest paid, business expenses, losses from the sale of securities, and donations, aggregating, in the case of appellant, $11,161.97, so that he had no taxable net income for the year 1933.

Petitioner's income tax return was due and filed March 15, 1934. A year later c. 15 of the Laws of Wisconsin for 1935, effective March 27, 1935, laid new taxes for the years 1933 and 1934 upon various taxable subjects. SectionPage 1426, with which we are alone concerned, imposed a graduated tax, with no deduction except the sum of $750, on all dividends received in 1933 which, when received, were deductible from gross income under § 71.04(4). The statute declared that the levy was an emergency tax to provide revenue for relief purposes and directed that the proceeds should be paid into the state treasury to be used for "unemployment relief purposes." Appellant paid the tax, amounting to $545.71, under protest, on May 13, 1935, and brought the present suit to compel its restitution as exacted in violation of the state constitution and the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. From the judgment of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin sustaining the tax,226 Wis. 595;277 N.W. 183, the case comes here on appeal. § 237 of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. § 344.First. Appellant assails the statute as a denial of equal protection because the dividends which it selected for taxation as a special class were subjected ratably to a tax burden different from that borne by other types of income for the same year by reason of the fact that the dividends were taxed at a different rate from that applied to other income and were given the benefit of but a single deduction of $750, while recipients of other types of income in that year were permitted to deduct specified items of interest, taxes, business losses and donations. It is not contended that the receipt of dividends from corporations is not subject to tax, or that apart from the retroactive application of the tax they could not be included in gross income for the purpose of arriving at net taxable income, but it is insisted that disparities in the tax burdens which may result from the different rates and deductions infringe the constitutional immunity.

Wisconsin income tax legislation has from the beginning treated dividends received from corporations derivingPage 143a substantial part of their income from business carried on within the State, on which the corporations have paid a tax to the State, as a distinct class of income for tax purposes. At first complete tax immunity was granted to them. § 1, c. 658, Laws of Wisconsin, 1911. Later the immunity was allowed ratably in the same proportion that the income of the corporation had been subjected to state income tax. § 1, c. 318, Laws of Wisconsin, 1923. And, finally, by amendment adopted in 19272and in force in 1933 complete immunity of dividends from income tax was allowed if 50% or more of the total net income of the corporation paying them was included in the computation of the Wisconsin tax on corporate income.3

When in 1935 the State was confronted with the necessity of raising revenue to meet the demand for unemployment relief, and of distributing the cost among its taxpayers, the legislature found one class of untaxed income, dividends received from a specified category of corporations. It also could have concluded that a substantial part of this income had borne no tax burden at its source in the earnings of the corporations, since, by § 71.02 (3)(d), corporations are not required to pay a tax on that part of their income allocable to business carried on or property located without the State.

We think that the selection of such income for taxation at rates and with deductions not shown to be unrelated to an equitable distribution of the tax burden is not a denial of the equal protection commanded by the Fourteenth Amendment. It cannot be doubted that the receipt of dividends from a corporation is an event which may constitutionally be taxed either with or without deductions,Lynchv.Hornby,247 U.S. 339; seeHelveringv.IndependentPage 144Life Ins. Co.,292 U.S. 371,381, even though the corporate income which is their source has also been taxed. SeeTennesseev.Whitworth,117 U.S. 129,136;Kleinv.Board of TaxSupervisors,282 U.S. 19,23;Colgatev.Harvey,296 U.S. 404,420. The fact that the dividends of corporations which have to some extent borne the burden of state taxation constitute a distinct class for purposes of tax exemption,Colgatev.Harvey, supra;compareTravellers' Insurance Co. v.Connecticut,185 U.S. 364,367;Kiddv.Alabama,188 U.S. 730;Darnellv.Indiana,226 U.S. 390,398, and that in consequence such dividends have borne no tax burden, is equally a basis for their selection for taxation.Watsonv.StateComptroller,254 U.S. 122,124,125;Kleinv.Board of TaxSupervisors, supra. Any classification of taxation is permissible which has reasonable relation to a legitimate end of governmental action. Taxation is but the means by which government distributes the burdens of its cost among those who enjoy its benefits. And the distribution of a tax burden by placing it in part on a special class which by reason of the taxing policy of the State has escaped all tax during the taxable period is not a denial of equal protection. SeeWatsonv.Comptroller, supra, 125. Nor is the tax any more a denial of equal protection because retroactive. If the 1933 dividends differed sufficiently from other classes of income to admit of the taxation, in that year, of one without the other, lapse of time did not remove that difference so as to compel equality of treatment when the income was taxed at a later date. Selection then of the dividends for the new taxation can hardly be thought to be hostile or invidious when the basis of selection is the fact that the taxed income is of the class which has borne no tax burden. The equal protection clause does not preclude the legislature from changing its mind in making an otherwise permissible choice of subjects of taxation. The very fact thatPage 145the dividends were relieved of tax, when the need for revenue was less, is basis for the legislative judgment that they should bear some of the added burden when the need is greater.

Numerous retroactive revisions of the federal and Wisconsin revenue laws, presently to be discussed, have imposed taxes on subjects previously untaxed and shifted the burden of old taxes by changes in rates, exemptions and deductions. It has never been thought that such changes involve a denial of equal protection if the new taxes could have been included in the earlier act when adopted. If some retroactive alteration in the scheme of a tax act is permissible, as is conceded, it seems plain that validity, so far as equal protection is concerned, must be determined, as in the case of any other tax, by ascertaining whether the thing taxed falls within a distinct class which may rationally be treated differently from other classes. If such changes are forbidden in the name of equal protection, legislatures in laying new taxes would be left powerless to rectify to any extent a previous distribution of tax burdens which experience had shown to be inequitable, even though constitutional.

The bare fact that the present tax is imposed at different rates and with different deductions from those applied to other types of income does not establish unconstitutionality. It is a commonplace that the equal protection clause does not require a State to maintain rigid rules of equal taxation, to resort to close distinctions, or to maintain a precise scientific uniformity. Possible differences in tax burdens, not shown to be substantial, or which are based on discrimination not shown to be arbitrary or capricious, do not fall within the constitutional prohibition.Lawrencev.State Tax Comm'n,286 U.S. 276,284,285, and cases cited.

Just what the differences are in the tax burdens cast upon the two types of income by the divergence in ratesPage 146and deductions applied to them does not appear. The burden placed on dividends by the taxing act might have been greater if they had been included in gross income and taxed on the same basis as other income since, in that case, the resulting increase in net income would be taxed at the rates applicable to the higher brackets. When the challenged statute was enacted there were available to the legislature the returns for the taxable year showing the different classes of income, the application to them of the existing law, and the effect of existing rates and deductions. There were also data to be derived from the corporation tax returns showing what part of the exempted dividends had their source in corporate income which had been taxed to the corporation and what part was attributable to corporate income not similarly taxed. The legislature was free to take into account all these factors in prescribing rates and deductions to be applied to the newly taxed dividends so as to arrive at an equitable distribution of the added tax burden. In the absence of any facts tending to show that the taxing act, in its purpose or effect, is a hostile or oppressive discrimination against the recipients of dividends who have been hitherto fortunate enough to escape all taxation we cannot say the taxing statute denies equal protection.Second. The objection chiefly urged to the taxing statute is that it is a denial of due process of law because in 1935 it imposed a tax on income received in 1933. But a tax is not necessarily unconstitutional because retroactive.Millikenv.United States,283 U.S. 15,21; and cases cited. Taxation is neither a penalty imposed on the taxpayer nor a liability which he assumes by contract. It is but a way of apportioning the cost of government among those who in some measure are privileged to enjoy its benefits and must bear its burdens.Page 147Since no citizen enjoys immunity from that burden, its retroactive imposition does not necessarily infringe due process, and to challenge the present tax it is not enough to point out that the taxable event, the receipt of income, antedated the statute.

In the cases in which this Court has held invalid the taxation of gifts made and completely vested before the enactment of the taxing statute, decision was rested on the ground that the nature or amount of the tax could not reasonably have been anticipated by the taxpayer at the time of the particular voluntary act which the statute later made the taxable event.Nicholsv.Coolidge,274 U.S. 531,542;Untermeyerv.Anderson,276 U.S. 440,445(citingBlodgettv.Holden,275 U.S. 142,147);Coolidgev.Long,282 U.S. 582. Since, in each of these cases, the donor might freely have chosen to give or not to give, the taxation, after the choice was made, of a gift which he might well have refrained from making had he anticipated the tax, was thought to be so arbitrary and oppressive as to be a denial of due process. But there are other forms of taxation whose retroactive imposition cannot be said to be similarly offensive, because their incidence is not on the voluntary act of the taxpayer. And even a retroactive gift tax has been held valid where the donor was forewarned by the statute books of the possibility of such a levy,Millikenv.United States, supra. In each case it is necessary to consider the nature of the tax and the circumstances in which it is laid before it can be said that its retroactive application is so harsh and oppressive as to transgress the constitutional limitation.

Property taxes and benefit assessments of real estate, retroactively applied, are not open to the objection successfully urged in the gift cases. SeeWagnerv.Baltimore,239 U.S. 207;Seattlev.Kelleher,195 U.S. 351;Page 148compareCitizens National Bankv.Kentucky,217 U.S. 443,454;Billingsv.United States,232 U.S. 261,282. Similarly, a tax on the receipt of income is not comparable to a gift tax. We can not assume that stockholders would refuse to receive corporate dividends even if they knew that their receipt would later be subjected to a new tax or to the increase of an old one. The objection to the present tax is of a different character and is addressed only to the particular inconvenience of the taxpayer in being called upon, after the customary time for levy and payment of the tax has passed, to bear a governmental burden of which it is said he had no warning and which he did not anticipate.

Assuming that a tax may attempt to reach events so far in the past as to render that objection valid, we think that no such case is presented here. For more than seventy-five years it has been the familiar legislative practice of Congress in the enactment of revenue laws to tax retroactively income or profits received during the year of the session in which the taxing statute is enacted, and in some instances during the year of the preceding session. SeeUntermeyerv.Anderson, supra, footnote 1. These statutes not only increased the tax burden by laying new taxes and increasing the rates of old ones or both, but they redistributed retroactively the tax burdens imposed by preexisting laws. This was notably the case with the "Revenue Act of 1918," enacted February 24, 1919,40 Stat. 1057, and made applicable to the calendar year 1918, which cut down exemptions and deductions, increased, in varying degrees, income, excess profits and capital stock taxes, altered the basis of surtaxes, and increased in progressive ratio the rates applicable to the higher brackets. Similarly the special munition manufacturer's tax, imposed on profits derived from sales of munitions, Act of September 8, 1916, c. 463,39 Stat. 756, 780, was applied to the twelve months ending December 31,Page 1491916. Cf.Carbon Steel Co. v.Lewellyn,251 U.S. 501;UnitedStatesv.Anderson,269 U.S. 422,435. The contention that the retroactive application of the Revenue Acts is a denial of the due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment has been uniformly rejected.Stockdalev.Insurance Companies, 20 Wall. 323, 331;Railroad Co. v.Rose,95 U.S. 78,80;Flintv.StoneTracy Co.,220 U.S. 107;Billingsv.United States,232 U.S. 261,282;Brushaberv.Union Pacific R. Co.,240 U.S. 1,20;Lynchv.Hornby,247 U.S. 339,343;LaBelle Iron Worksv.United States,256 U.S. 377. The like practice of the legislature of Wisconsin has been approved by its courts.4

The equitable distribution of the costs of government through the medium of an income tax is a delicate and difficult task. In its performance experience has shown the importance of reasonable opportunity for the legislative body, in the revision of tax laws, to distribute increased costs of government among its taxpayers in the light of present need for revenue and with knowledge of the sources and amounts of the various classes of taxable income during the taxable period preceding revision. Without that opportunity accommodation of the legislative purpose to the need may be seriously obstructed if not defeated. We cannot say that the due process which the Constitution exacts denies that opportunity to legislatures; that it withholds from them, more than in the case of a prospective tax, authority to distribute the increased tax burden in the light of experience and in conformity with accepted notions of the requirements of equal protection; or that in view of well establishedPage 150legislative practice, both state and national, taxpayers can justly assert surprise or complain of arbitrary action in the retroactive apportionment of tax burdens to income at the first opportunity after knowledge of the nature and amount of the income is available. And we think that the "recent transactions" to which this Court has declared a tax law may be retroactively applied,Cooperv.United States,280 U.S. 409,411, must be taken to include the receipt of income during the year of the legislative session preceding that of its enactment.

The Joint Resolution of Congress of July 4, 1864, No. 77,13 Stat. 417, imposed an additional tax on incomes earned during the calendar year 1863, this tax being imposed after the taxes for the year had been paid. InStockdalev.Insurance Companies,supra, 331, Mr. Justice Miller said of it: "The right of Congress to have imposed this tax by a new statute, although the measure of it was governed by the income of the past year, cannot be doubted. . . . no one doubted the validity of the tax or attempted to resist it." The Act of February 24, 1919, c. 18, Tit. 2,40 Stat. 1057, 1058-1088, which taxed incomes for the calendar year 1918, was applied without question as to its constitutionality inUnited Statesv.Robbins,269 U.S. 315, and in other cases.

In the present case the returns of income received in 1933 were filed and became available in March, 1934. Wisconsin Stat. 1933, § 71.09(4). The next succeeding session of the legislature at which tax legislation could be considered was in 1935, when the challenged statute was passed. By § 11, Art. IV; §4, Art.V, of the Wisconsin constitution, and § 13.02 Wisconsin Statutes, 1935, regular sessions of the legislature are held in each odd-numbered year. Special sessions of the legislature may be held on call of the governor, at which no business can be transacted "except as shall be necessary to accomplishPage 151the special purposes for which it was convened." A special session was called by the governor in 1934, but for purposes unrelated to taxation. Proclamations of the Governor of Wisconsin December 2, 28, 1933, January 18, 22, 30, 1934. Thus the legislature in 1935, at the first opportunity after the tax year in which the income was received, made its revision of the tax laws applicable to 1933 income, as did Congress in the Joint Resolution of July 4, 1864, commented on inStockdalev.Insurance Companies, supra.

While the Supreme Court of Wisconsin thought that the present tax might "approach or reach the limit of permissible retroactivity," we cannot say that it exceeds it.Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE ROBERTS, dissenting.
The Constitution of Wisconsin, ArticleVIII, §1, provides: "Taxes may also be imposed on incomes, privileges and occupations, which taxes may be graduated and progressive, and reasonable exemptions may be provided." Pursuant to this grant, the State, since 1911,1has had a statute levying a general income tax on corporations and individuals at a graduated rate. The system, which is analogous to that with which we are familiar in the federal field, has, like the latter, been amended from time to time in detail. The law as it stood in 1933 is found in the 1933 edition of the Wisconsin statutes as chapter 71. The tax is imposed for annual periods. The gross income of a given year includes rents, dividends, wages, and salaries, profits from the transaction of business or sale of property and all other gains, profits, or income derived from any source except such as are specifically exempted. In ascertaining taxable income each taxpayerPage 152is entitled to deduct from gross receipts wages, salaries, and other expenses of conducting a business, occupation, or profession, depreciation, also cost of property sold. In addition each is permitted to deduct certain losses incurred within the year not compensated by insurance, interest paid on indebtedness, state and federal taxes, contributions to the State or its subdivisions or to charitable objects and amounts paid to an unemployment reserve.2Pensions are exempted, and a specified amount may be deducted from the tax, when ascertained, as a personal exemption.3Dividends (with exceptions not material) received from certain corporations filing income tax returns under the law, and paying income tax to the State, are deductible from gross income.4We were told at the bar that this deduction had been authorized for many years prior to 1933.

The appellant, a resident of Wisconsin, on or about March 15, 1934, as by law required, made a return of his income for 1933 showing his gross income and took deductions for interest paid, for losses on the sale of securities, for business expenses, for charitable contributions, and for dividends received from certain corporations, with the result that no net taxable income remained. Without the deduction of the dividends his net income would have been $2,221.39.

When the Wisconsin legislature met in its regular biennial session in January 1935 it was confronted by a need for additional revenue to meet the State's obligations. The condition is referred to as an emergency because the need for additional funds grew out of the then current relief load, but the emergency was no different than if the State had found itself short of funds for thePage 153payment of official salaries. As the Supreme Court of Wisconsin has said: "Expense for relief of the unemployed is on no different footing than any other governmental expense."5And it goes without saying that an emergency does not create power but is merely the occasion for the exercise of existing powers in conformity to constitutional principles.6

What then did the legislature do to meet the demand for public revenue? It adopted a statute effective March 27, 1935.7By § 2 this Act laid an income tax additional to and separate from the general income tax at a graduated rate on the income of all individuals, for the year 1934, which was to be "assessed, collected, and paid in the same manner, upon the same income and subject to the same regulations," as provided "by law for the assessment, collection and payment of the normal income tax," with certain variations. One of the variations was that no deduction was to be allowed for those corporate dividends which were deductible under subsection (4) of § 71.04 of the general law.

Section 3 imposed an additional tax on transfers of property made up to July 1, 1937. Section 4 placed additional license fees for the year 1934 on telephone companies. Section 5 imposed an additional license fee for 1934 upon electric, gas and similar utility companies.

Section 6 imposed on the 1933 dividends, which had been deductible under the general law, a graduated tax of one per cent. on the first two thousand dollars of net dividend income, three per cent. on the next $3,000, and seven per cent. on all above $5,000. Net dividend income is defined as gross dividend income less $750. The taxPage 154is to be assessed, collected and paid in the same manner as the normal income tax for 1934. Under this section the appellant was required to make return and pay on some $12,000 of the dividends which he had been permitted to deduct from gross income in calculating and paying his income tax for 1933 and was assessed thereon $545.71, which he paid under protest and brought this action to recover.

The question is whether § 6 transgresses the prohibition of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin, although stating that "While the present tax may approach or reach the limit of permissible retroactivity, it does not exceed it," sustained the statute as against challenge under the equal protection and due process clauses of the amendment.8I think the statute is violative of the guarantees of equal protection and due process.

One must ignore the realities of the situation if he approaches a decision of the case in the light of the equal protection clause as if the statute under attack were prospective in operation; or, in the light of the due process clause, as if the statute were a revision of an existing general income tax system theretofore in force. The illegal discrimination and the arbitrary character of the Act condemn it under the equal protection clause not because it selects a particular class of citizens for the imposition of the tax but because, in so doing, it reaches back and singles out for a new and wholly different sort of income tax those few only to whom a specific deduction was allowed in the general computation of their taxable income for the year 1933. It will not do to examine the classificationPage 155as if it were the declaration of a new policy of taxation to be operative in the future. No more will it do to separate the retroactive feature of the law and consider it as if it were a mere amendment of a general income tax system as such applicable to all income of all taxpayers subject to the law as it stood at the date of the amendment. The reason for allowing the deduction is plain. As has been said in this court: "The purpose of the Legislature was solely to prevent double taxation by the State of Wisconsin, of the income received by individuals in the form of dividends."9The same thing may be said as to the reason for other allowable deductions, as, for instance, of taxes paid. Reasons of fairness and public policy moved the State to allow the permitted deductions from gross income.

It readily may be conceded that Wisconsin is, and always has been, free in the imposition of an income tax, for good and sufficient reason, to treat the recipients of dividends on a basis different from the recipients of other sorts of income. The State also was free to revoke, alter, and amend the provisions for deductions as its views of fairness and policy might dictate. This case presents no such situation. After the taxpayers had returned and paid their tax under the existing system and according to the long established public policy of the State, the State sought additional revenues. Instead of levying an exaction upon the citizens generally or certain classes of citizens, the State went back and sought to tax a small class of income tax payers by reason of the purely arbitrary and adventitious fact that they had been allowed a particular deduction in a past year. It chose as the base of the tax a part of the income of the taxpayer under the law as previously in force. The previously granted deduction was not withdrawn but, on the contrary, the income representedPage 156by that deduction was picked out from all others, was classified by itself and taxed in a manner wholly unrelated to the income and the taxes of the recipient of these dividends under the general law under which he had computed and paid his tax. If the State was at liberty to do this it was equally free to tax at a new rate and upon a new scheme income of the taxpayers who in 1933 deducted losses sustained or those who deducted interest paid or taxes paid or charitable contributions made. It was equally at liberty to form a taxable class of those who were granted personal exemptions, to wrest out of their setting, as part of the general income of a taxpayer, rents received, royalties received, or professional income accrued in 1933 and to impose a special income tax on one or all of those items. As the trial judge well said:

"In the equitable distribution of taxation persons receiving dividends in the year 1933 should not be classified less favorably than persons receiving other kinds of income that year. For the purpose of taxation the income was not materially different than the following kinds: Salaries paid officers of private corporations; salaries paid to public officials; interest; rents; profit and income of all kinds received by individuals and corporations generally, unless some good reason appeared for some legislative exception.

"The statute is also discriminatory against the class of persons receiving dividends in the year 1933 when compared with other classes of persons when such other classes are assessed at all. It discriminates in being more drastic in limiting deductions for losses, expenses and exemptions. It is more drastic in the rapid increase of the graduated rate. For some reason one class only was selected to bear the entire burden of the emergency tax in question. This class was subjected to an unusually inequitable burden."

Decisions sustaining the power of a State prospectively to classify, to grant exemptions, or otherwise to interrelatePage 157the tax burdens of different classes of taxpayers are of no aid and lend no support to the present statute. In no case heretofore to which attention has been called have the courts sustained a law which after the fact reaches back two years and selects for a special form of income taxation at a new rate a group of the taxpayers who, in accordance with preexisting law, had paid that share of the general income tax which the legislature had adjudged to be its equal and proportionate share of the burden of government. To attempt this was, in my judgment, arbitrary and discriminatory classification.

From what has been said I think it apparent that the retroactivity of the challenged statute taken alone is not the element which condemns it any more than the attempted classification alone would condemn it if the Act were prospective in operation. The cases relied upon to support the statute, viewed in its retroactive aspect, do not meet the present case. In one of the cited cases, —United Statesv.Hudson,299 U.S. 498,500, — earlier decisions were thus summarized: "As respects income tax statutes it long has been the practice of Congress to make them retroactive for relatively short periods so as to include profits from transactions consummated while the statute was in process of enactment, or within so much of the calendar year as preceded the enactment; and repeated decisions of this Court have recognized this practice and sustained it. . . ." That was a case which fell squarely within this statement of the scope of permissible retroactivity. All enactments sustained that amended the tax system of a prior year were continuations of that existing system, and the taxpayers had knowledge, before the expiration of the year of receipt of the income by which the tax was measured, that amendment of the system was under consideration. To this class belongs the provision of the Wisconsin Act of 1935 imposing an additional tax on income received in 1934. This feature of the Act isPage 158not here under attack. A very different course was adopted with respect to the income of 1933. For that year the statute imposed a special income tax on a class selected because the law in force when they paid their taxes had permitted them to deduct certain items, and ignored all others to whom similar deductions had been granted. Thus the whole scheme of the general income tax was unbalanced and a peculiar and specific burden laid upon a selected few who had theretofore been relieved of the unjust burden of double taxation. What was said inMillikenv.UnitedStates,283 U.S. 15,21, is peculiarly apposite to the facts here disclosed. There, referring to earlier decisions, condemning, under the due process clause, retroactive taxes, it was stated: "In both the point was stressed, as the basis of decision, that the nature and amount of the tax burden imposed could not have been understood and foreseen by the taxpayer at the time of the particular voluntary act which was made the occasion of the tax." Here the nature and amount of this special and peculiar tax could not have been understood and foreseen when the petitioner paid his 1933 income tax.

It is to be remembered that the Act in question is not a curative statute for the collection of taxes assessed in a prior year and uncollected10nor one intended to make available taxes which, by reason of illegality in their imposition, were not paid in the year in which they were assessed.11The Act is not a remedial measure to confirm or ratify a doubtful administrative interpretation of prior legislation.12It does not lay an excise or a privilege measured by the income of a prior year,13nor is it a statute to settle doubts as to whether an earlier taxing Act had expired by limitation.14Page 159

It was suggested at the bar that the exaction is a property tax and bad as such because retroactively imposed. The reply was that retroactive property taxes have been upheld. The cases cited do not touch the validity of anad valoremproperty tax retroactively imposed. Some of them involved special assessments for benefits assessed after the completion of the improvement.15Another cited to the proposition dealt with an excise for the use, for pleasure, of foreign built yachts either owned or chartered by the user for more than six months during the taxable year. The exaction was held an excise on the privilege of use and not a tax upon ownership, and, moreover, the tax was not retroactive in operation but was assessed upon the taxpayer at a date during which the taxpayer's use of the yacht continued.16Still another dealt with a curative act passed to reach property illegally assessed.17But whether viewed as a property or an income tax the exaction is bad. Most, if not all, the States have long maintained the policy of exempting places of religious worship from annual tax levies. Will it be contended that if the State were now to impose a tax on the value of such exempt property for some past year, the action would not be an arbitrary taking of property as well as a hostile discrimination?

If, as this court has repeatedly said, an income tax is an equitable method of distributing the necessary burdens of government, certainly no such discrimination as is evidenced by the challenged Act can properly fall within the description. The Act evidences purposeful and arbitrary discrimination and thus violates the guarantee of equal protection.

MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS and MR. JUSTICE BUTLER join in this opinion.Page 160
  1. Page 141 Sec. 71.04(4) permits the deduction from gross income of dividends received from corporations whose principal business is attributable to Wisconsin; ". . . any corporation shall be considered as having its principal business attributable to Wisconsin if fifty per cent or more of the entire net income or loss of such corporation . . . (for the year preceding the payment of such dividends) was used in computing the average taxable income provided by chapter 71. . . ." ↩
  2. Page 143 c. 539, § 4, Laws of Wisconsin of 1927. ↩
  3. Page 143 See Note 1,supra. ↩
  4. Page 149Income Tax Cases(1912),148 Wis. 456,514;134 N.W. 673;135 N.W. 164;State ex rel. Globe Tubes Co. v.Lyons(1924),183 Wis. 107,124;197 N.W. 578;Cliffs Chemical Co. v.WisconsinTax Comm'n(1927),193 Wis. 295,302;214 N.W. 447;Westv.Tax Comm'n(1932),207 Wis. 557,562;242 N.W. 165;Van Dykev.Tax Comm'n(1935),217 Wis. 528;295 N.W. 700. ↩
  5. Page 151 Laws of Wisconsin 1911, c. 658, p. 984. ↩
  6. Page 152 § 71.04. ↩
  7. Page 152 § 71.05. ↩
  8. Page 152 § 71.04(4). ↩
  9. Page 153Scobiev.Tax Commission,225 Wis. 529,538;275 N.W. 531. ↩
  10. Page 153Home Building Loan Assn. v.Blaisdell,290 U.S. 398,425,436;Wilsonv.New,243 U.S. 332,348. ↩
  11. Page 153 Laws of Wisconsin 1935, c. 15, p. 19. ↩
  12. Page 154 The judges who heard the cause were equally divided in opinion. Four justices of the Supreme Court voted to sustain the Act. The trial judge and three justices of the Supreme Court were of the opinion that it was unconstitutional. ↩
  13. Page 155Millerv.Milwaukee,272 U.S. 713,717. ↩
  14. Page 158Florida Central P.R. Co. v.Reynolds,183 U.S. 471. ↩
  15. Page 158Citizens National Bankv.Kentucky,217 U.S. 443. ↩
  16. Page 158Hechtv.Malley,265 U.S. 144. ↩
  17. Page 158Flintv.Stone Tracy Co.,220 U.S. 107. ↩
  18. Page 158Stockdalev.Insurance Companies, 20 Wall. 323. ↩
  19. Page 159Seattlev.Kelleher,195 U.S. 351;Wagnerv.Baltimore,239 U.S. 207. ↩
  20. Page 159Billingsv.United States,232 U.S. 261. ↩
  21. Page 159Citizens National Bankv.Kentucky, supra. ↩