Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/647

611 JURISDICTION TO TAX 6ii The decisions with regard to the taxation of notes and other securities in the hands of a local agent were sometimes based upon the theory that the securities had an actual physical situs within the state."^ But these cases are exceptional; the power cannot be rested solely upon this ground, since it is almost uni- versally applied as well to debts and other intangible property as to notes and bonds. Credits acquired in the course of business are taxable as business capital, situated at the place of business."'^ The received doctrine is well stated by Chief Justice Whitfield in Adams v. Colonial &° United States Mortgage Co}^^ "Wherever the money of a lender in one state is by the principal in- trusted to the control of an agent in another state for the purpose of being kept in the latter state, and loaned out, collected, and reloaned, or habitually kept on deposit, for safety merely, ... so as thus to remain, through a course of dealing, so long as to become localized as a part of the whole mass of personal property in the latter state, such money acquires what is known as a 'business situs' for the purpose of taxation." The assets constitute, as it were, the subject matter or stock in trade of such business."^ Thus, in Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. V. New Orleans ^^° Mr. Justice Moody said : "We are not dealing here merely with a single credit, or a series of separate credits, but with a business. The insurance company chose to enter into the business of lending money within the State of Louisiana, and employed a local agent to conduct that business. It was conducted under the laws of the State. The State undertook to tax the capital employed in the business precisely as it taxed the capital of its own citizens in like situation. For the purpose of arriving at the amount of capital actually employed, it caused the credits arising out of the busi- ness to be assessed. We think the State had the power to do this, and that the foreigner doing business cannot escape taxation upon his capital i8 Ore. 377, 23 Pac. 253 (1890); Billinghurst v. Spink County, 5 S. D. 84, 58 N. W. 272 (1894). "* New Orleans v. Stempel, 175 U. S. 309 (1889). 1" See most of the cases cited above, note 115, as well as the following: People v. Willis, 133 N. Y. 383, 31 N. E. 225 (1892); People v. Barker, 157 N. Y. 159, 51 N. E. 1043 (1898); Matter of McMahon, 66 How. Pr. (N. Y.) 190 (1883); Marshall-Wells Hardware Co. v. Multnomah County, 58 Ore. 469, 115 Pac. 150 (1911). ^^* 82 Miss. 263, 392, 34 So. 482 (1903). "' Boggs, J., in Matzenbaugh v. People, 194 111. 108, 116, 62 N. E. 546 (1902). "0 205 U. S. 395, 402 (1907).