Evans v. Gore/Dissent Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Mr. Justice HOLMES dissenting.

This is an action brought by the plaintiff in error against an acting Collector of Internal Revenue to recover a portion of the income tax paid by the former. The ground of the suit is that the plaintiff is entitled to deduct from the total of his net income six thousand dollars, being the amount of his salary as a judge of the District Court of the United States. The Act of February 24, 1919, c. 18, § 210, 40 Stat. 1057, 1062 (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1919, § 6336 1/8 e), taxes the net income of every individual, and section 213, p. 1065, requires the compensation received by the judges of the United States to be included in the gross income from which the net income is to computed. This was done by the plaintiff in error and the tax was paid under protest. He contends that the requirement mentioned and the tax, to the extent that it was enhanced by consideration of the plaintiff's salary, are contrary to article 3, section 1, of the Constitution, which provides that the compensation of the judges shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. Upon demurrer judgment was entered for the defendant, and the case comes here upon the single question of the validity of the abovementioned provisions of the act.

The decision below seems to me to have been right for two distinct reasons: that this tax would have been valid under the original Constitution, and that if not so, it was made lawful by the Sixteenth Amendment. In the first place I think that the clause protecting the compensation of judges has no reference to a case like this. The exemption of salaries from diminution is intended to secure the independence of the judges, on the ground, as it was put by Hamilton in the Federalist (No. 79) that 'a power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.' That is a very good reason for preventing attempts to deal with a judge's salary as such, but seems to me no reason for exonerating him from the ordinary duties of a citizen, which he shares with all others. To require a man to pay the taxes that all other men have to pay cannot possibly be made an instrument to attack his independence as a judge. I see nothing in the purpose of this clause of the Constitution to indicate that the judges were to be a privileged class, free from bearing their share of the cost of the institutions upon which their well-being if not their life depends.

I see equally little in the letter of the clause to indicate the intent supposed. The tax on net incomes is a tax on the balance of a mutual account in which there always are some and may be many items on both sides. It seems to me that it cannot be affected by an inquiry into the source from which the items more or less remotely are derived. Obviously there is some point at which the immunity of a judge's salary stops, or to put it in the language of the clause, a point at which it could not be said that his compensation was diminished by a charge. If he bought a house the fact that a part or the whole of the price had been paid from his compensation as judge would not exempt the house. So if he bought bonds. Yet in such cases the advantages of his salary would be diminished. Even if the house or bonds were bought with other money the same would be true, since the money would not have been free for such an application if he had not used his salary to satisfy other more peremptory needs. At some point, I repeat, money received as salary loses its specific character as such. Money held in trust loses its identity by being mingled with the general funds of the owner. I see no reason why the same should not be true of a salary. But I do not think that the result could be avoided by keeping the salary distinct. I think that the moment the salary is received, whether kept distinct or not, it becomes part of the general income of the owner, and is mingled with the rest, in theory of law, as an item in the mutual account wit the United States. I see no greater reason for exempting the recipients while they still have income as income than when they have invested it in a house or bond.

The decisions heretofore reached by this Court seem to me to justify my conclusion. In Peck & Co. v. Lowe, 247 U.S. 165, 38 Sup. Ct. 432, 62 L. Ed. 1049, a tax was levied by Congress upon the income of the plaintiff corporation. More than two-thirds of the income were derived from exports and the Constitution in terms prohibits any tax on articles exported from any state. By construction it had been held to create 'a freedom from any tax which directly burdens the exportation.' Fairbanks v. United States, 181 U.S. 283, 293, 21 Sup. Ct. 648, 652 (45 L. Ed. 862). The prohibition was unequivocal and express, not merely an inference as in the present case. Yet it was held unanimously that the tax was valid. 'It is not laid on income from exportation * *  * in a discriminative way, but just as it is laid on other income. * *  * There is no discrimination. At most, exportation is affected only indirectly and remotely. The tax is levied * *  * after the recipient of the income is free to use it as he chooses. Thus what is taxed-the net income-is as far removed from exportation as are articles intended for export before the exportation begins.' 247 U.S. 174, 175, 38 Sup. Ct. 434, 62 L. Ed. 1049. All this applies with even greater force when, as I have observed, the Constitution has no words that forbid a tax. In United States Glue Co. v. Oak Creek, 247 U.S. 321, 329, 38 Sup. Ct. 499, 62 L. Ed. 1135, Ann. Cas. 1918E, 748, the same principle was affirmed as to interstate commerce and it was said that if there was no discrimination against such commerce the tax constituted one of the ordinary burdens of government from which parties were not exempted because they happened to be engaged in commerce among the States.

A second and independent reason why this tax appears to me valid is that, even if I am wrong as to the scope of the original document, the Sixteenth Amendment justifies the tax, whatever would have been the law before it was applied. By that amendment Congress is given power to 'collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived.' It is true that it goes on 'without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration,' and this shows the particular difficulty that led to it. But the only cause of that difficulty was an attempt to trace income to its source, and it seems to me that the Amendment was intended to put an end to the cause and not merely to obviate a single result. I do not see how judges can claim an abatement of their income tax on the ground that an item in their gross income is salary, when the power is given expressly to tax incomes from whatever source derived.

Mr. Justice BRANDEIS concurs in this opinion.