Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/296

260 26o HARVARD LAW REVIEW their fuD value all the instrumentalities used for such commerce." "° The contradiction plainly appears when it is said that intangible property is taxable and that "it matters not in what this intangible property consists — whether privileges, corporate franchises, con- tracts or obUgations." ^^^ The rest of Mr. Justice Brewer's opinion consists of forceful argument why this intangible property should be taxed for what it is actually worth. "Substance of right demands that whatever be the real value of any property, that value may be accepted by the State for the purpose of taxation, and this ought not to be evaded by any mere confusion of words." "^ Acciunulated wealth, it is said, will laugh at the crudity of tax laws which reach only tangible property and ignore that which is intangible."^ After pointing out that the tangible property of the Adams Express Company was valued at about $4,000,000, while its stock would sell for over $16,000,000, Mr. Justice Brewer continues: " But what a mockery of substantial justice it would be for a corpora- tion, whose property is worth to its stockholders for the purpose of income and sale $16,800,000, to be adjudged liable for taxation upon only one fourth of that amount. The value which property bears in the market, the amount for which its stock can be bought and sold, is the real value. Business men do not pay cash for property in moonshine or dreamland. They buy and pay for that which is of value in its power to produce in- come, or for purposes of sale." "^ With this let us cordially agree. Ohio was not venturing into moonshine or dreamland to find the value which it taxed. If its method of apportionment was just, it was not venturing outside of Ohio."* But its excursion into the realm of the intangible was an "0 166 U. S. 185, 218, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 604 (1897). "1 Ibid., 185, 219. "2 Ibid,, 185, 221. 1" Ibid. "< Ibid., 185, 222. is the situs of this intangible property? Is it simply where the home oflBce is, where is found the central directing thought which controls the workings of the great machine, or in the State which gave it its corporate franchise; or is that intangible property distributed wherever its tangible property is located and its work is done? Clearly, as we think, the latter. . . . But the franchise to be is only one of the franchises of a corporation. The franchise to do is an independent franchise, or rather a combina-
 * " On the situs of this property without location, Mr. Justice Brewer said: "Where