Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/435

399 INDIRECT ENCROACHMENT ON FEDERAL AUTHORITY 399 these safeguards against discrimination, taxes substantially on inter- state business have been sustained. Thus the state may aim directly at gross or net receipts from interstate commerce, if it restrains itself from other shots at the same economic interest, or at net receipts if it aims equally at all receipts from all sources within the state. The law may be stated in this way with little or no fiction, word-juggling or logical inconsistency. Such a mode of statement has the further advantage that it throws the spotlight on the "practi- cal lines" by which the limits of the practical conception of regu- lation are fixed, and which divide all factual regulations of inter- state commerce into those that are, and those that are not, regulations of that commerce "in a constitutional sense." The distinction set forth in the Galveston case and retroactively applied to the earlier cases acquits Mr. Justice Brewer of the charge of inconsistency. The gross-receipts tax of which he disapproved was in addition to another tax on the same business value; those which he favored were not. This distinction is the basis of the difference between the decisions in Meyer v. Wells, Fargo &* Co.^^ and United States Express Co. v. Minnesota,^^ both of which were rendered on February 19, 191 2. Both involved gross-receipts taxes on nonresident express companies. The Texas tax held invalid in the Meyer case was declared by the statute to be "in addition to the taxes levied and collected upon an ad valorem basis upon the property and assets of such corporation." ^°° The Minnesota tax held rightfully exacted from the United States Express Company was "in lieu of all taxes upon its property." ^°^ Both decisions were unanimous. The greater part of the receipts taxed by Minnesota were held not to be from interstate commerce. These were from carriage between points within the state over a route which passed through a portion of another state. The state court had subtracted that portion of these receipts which the carriage in the intervening state bore to the total carriage. Whether such deduction was necessary the Supreme Court was not called upon to say. It sustained the balance on the authority of Lehigh Valley R. R. Co. v. Pennsyl- " 223 U. S. 298, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep. 218 (1912). " 223 U. S. 335, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep. 211 (1912). 100 223 U. S. 298, 299, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep. 218 (1912). 101 223 U. S. 335, 339, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep. 211 (1912).