United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Meyer v. Wells, Fargo & Co., 223 U.S. 298 (1912)

Meyer v. Wells, Fargo & Company

No. 624

Argued January 16, 1912

Decided February 19, 1912

223 U.S. 298

Syllabus

In estimating for taxation the proportion of income of a corporation doing interstate business, a state cannot include income from investments in bonds and lands outside of the state. Fargo v. Hart, 193 U. S. 490.

The Oklahoma tax on gross revenue of corporations of 1910, as far as it affects express companies, is not a property tax, but a tax on all revenue, including that received from interstate commerce, and as such is an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Ry. Co. v. Texas, 210 U. S. 217.

Where a state statute requires that a corporation doing both interstate and intrastate business return it gross receipts from all sources, the taxing feature of the statute cannot be construed as relating only to receipts from intrastate commerce and sustained separately in that respect.

Complainant in an equity suit to restrain the collection of a state tax on gross receipts on the ground that the act is unconstitutional because it includes receipts from interstate commerce is not bound, in order to maintain the bill, to tender so much a would have fallen on intrastate receipts. People's Bank v. Marye, 191 U. S. 272, distinguished.

The court cannot reshape a taxing statute which includes element beyond the state's power of taxation simply because it embraces elements that it might have reached had the statute been drawn with a different measure and intent.

Page 223 U. S. 299

The facts, which involve the constitutionality of provisions of the statute of 1910 of the State of Oklahoma imposing a revenue tax upon receipts of express companies, are stated in the opinion.