Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/436

400 400 HARVARD LAW REVIEW vania,^!^ on which the state court had relied.^"^ In the Lehigh case, Pennsylvania had confined itself to the receipts from that part of the transportation which took place within its borders, so that the decision does not affirm that it could not have used the receipts from the entire journey .^^ Chief Justice Fuller stated that the i"* 145 U. S. 192, 12 Sup. Ct. Rep. 806 (1892). ^^ State V. United States Express Co., 114 Minn. 346, 349-50, 131 N. W. 489 (1911). Of the Lehigh case, Judge Bunn observed: "It perhaps does not appear as clearly as it might whether the recovery in that case was allowed for the entire earn- ings, or for a proportion thereof based upon the mileage within the state; but we interpret the decision as allowing a recovery of taxes upon that proportion of the earn- ings derived from the carriage wholly within the state. This seems to us the safer rule, and avoids any question of taxing interstate commerce, and we adopt and apply it to this case. Nine per cent of the taxes recovered on this class of earnings should be deducted from the amount of the recovery" (page 350). Judge Bunn is warranted in finding the Lehigh case somewhat deficient in clarity. From the statement of facts it appears that the auditor-general of the state had " settled an account" with the company for its taxes on gross receipts, which accoimt included, in addition to receipts from carriage entirely within the state and from carriage be- tween two termini within the state passing en route through another state, five other classes of receipts all of which were from interstate commerce, with the possible ex- ception of class three which was made up of receipts from "transportation by con- tinuous carriage from points in a foreign state to other points in the same state passing through the state of Pennsylvania." The other receipts taken were from interstate commerce originating or ending in Pennsylvania, or passing through Pennsylvania between termini in two other states, or commerce not traversing Pennsylvania at aU. In all instances the total receipts for the entire carriage were taken, and this amount was then reduced to a fraction which corresponded to the fraction of the company's total mileage which lay within the state. The state court reheved the company from any inclusion in the assessment of the last five classes enumerated. So far as appears, the state made no endeavor to amend the account so as to levy on all the receipts in the first two classes. Plainly there was no necessity that it should restrict itself to less than all of the receipts from commerce wholly within the state. Its use of the fraction was part of another plan which the state court frustrated. It is evident, however, it was only the fraction of the receipts from commerce between points in the state passing through the intervening state that came to the Supreme Court, for Chief Justice Fuller states that "the tax imder consideration here was determined in respect of receipts for the proportion of the transportation within the State ..." (145 U. S. 192, 201). •°* The natural inference from the opinion of Chief Justice Fuller is that the whole trip was an intra-state trip, so far as taxation is concerned, since he answers in the negative the question whether "the mere passage over another State renders that business foreign, which is domestic." Ewing v. Leavenworth, 226 U. S. 464, 33 Sup. Ct. Rep. 157 (1913), allowed a state to impose a flat fee on this kind of commerce. In New York ex rel. Cornell Steamboat Co. v. Sohmer, 235 U. S. 549, 35 Sup. Ct. Rep. 162 (1915), it was held that no deduction from receipts for transportation on the Hudson River between New York points was necessary because the route traversed water within the jurisdiction of New Jersey or because the tows which carried the com-