Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/690

654 654 HARVARD LAW REVIEW from interstate commerce, is a tax thereon a regulation of that commerce "in a constitutional sense"? In considering the question, let us assume that an individual may be taxed at his domicil on all net income which comes to his coffers, for so the law is likely to be. It does not accord with traditional views of the law to declare that a state's power over artificial persons of its own creation is less than that over man that is born of woman. Nevertheless it is submitted that the Su- preme Court would do well so to hold with respect to the matter now under consideration. A corporation does not send its children to school; it does not vote for governor; it does not make a. will; it does not marry or give in marriage. It is a business mechanism, and nothing more. It is a medium by which income is made and distributed. In so far as the process is local to the taxing state, the fruits thereof should be taxed. But there are several reasons which justify taxing an individual on his total net gain at the place where he makes his permanent home, that do not apply to a similar tax on a corporation. The individual is the terminus of the income. The termini of corporate income are often individuals in other states. The assimilation, of a corporation to a natural person may for many purposes be a convenient fancy, but it should not blind us to essential differences that ought for other purposes to be controlling. The crucial question is whether business, as business, should be taxed elsewhere than where it is carried on. It is agreed that it should be taxed there. If it is taxed elsewhere as well, the burden is cumulative. When the corporate income passes on to the individuals who are in reality the corporation, it may be taxed again. Granting that some double taxation is neces- sary, or even desirable, it is possible to have too much of it. No more feasible spot for elision of double taxation can be found than the extra-state income of a corporation. The majority of the states which have thus far imposed taxes on the net income of corporations have discovered this for themselves. While the con- stitutionaHty of such reaping where a state has not sown is still undetermined, the Supreme Court would do well to consider the problem in all of its practical bearings, and not follow blindly some metaphysical conceptions of the nature of the corporate en- tity and questionably broad declarations as to the power of a state over its mystical being.