Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/627

591 JURISDICTION TO TAX 591 domicile of the owner, mobilia sequuntur personam ■^^ but the true nature of the tax, as in reality a personal tax, was well recognized; "the proceeding is personal only." ^^ In some states foreign chattels were not included in the tax laid upon a resident, but this was because the court found such to be the legislative will.^^ While a resident was thus often taxed on the value of his foreign chattels, it is universally agreed that the value of foreign land can never enter into taxation.^ The immovable nature of land and the impossibility of conceiving of it as "attached to the person" sufficiently justify the distinction in this respect between land and chattels; but the absence of a logical distinction finally in- fluenced the Supreme Court of the United States to hold that a state cannot, in accordance with due process of law, tax its own corporation upon the value of its chattels permanently situated outside the state.^^ In his case the Union Refrigerator Transit Company was a Ken- tucky corporation, owning cars which were used on railroads throughout the United States; a small proportion only being used in Kentucky. The Court of Appeals of Kentucky ordered the taxation of all the cars; but this was reversed in the Supreme Court of the United States. In the argument for the Commonwealth it was argued that "the laws of that State protect such domestic cor- poration, the person of the owner of such property, and, as a con- sideration for such protection, that State is entitled to tax all of its personal property, because it is a creature of the laws of that State." The court, however, regarded the cases which supported this contention as based on the outworn maxim, mobilia sequuntur personam, and did not deem the principle suggested as worthy of direct discussion. The gist of Mr. Justice Brown's argument was this: The power of taxation is based upon the assumption of an equivalent rendered Errol, 116 U. S. 517 (1886). " Agnew, J., in McKeen v. Northampton, 49 Pa. 519 (1865). The opinion pro- ceeds: "Though different kinds of property are specified as the subjects of taxation, it is not as a proceeding in rem, but only as affording the means and measure of taxa- tion. The tax is assessed personally." ^ lAoyt V. Commissioners of Taxes, 23 N. Y. 224 (1861). » Bittinger's Estate, 129 Pa. 338, 18 Atl. 132 (1889). " Union Refrigerator Transit Co. v. Kentucky, 199 U. S. 194 (1905). Fuller, C. J., and Holmes, J., dissenting.
 * " "Part of his general estate attached to his person." Bradley, J., in Coe v.