Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/710

674 674 HARVARD LAW REVIEW Here is the possible implication that a tax on local business may be so large or so disproportionate to the business taxed as to be regarded as a device for reaching the interstate business. At any rate, the court had a chance to declare that the tax could not be a regulation of interstate commerce, whatever the facts might be as to the profitabiUty of local business. By faihng to do so, it invites other complainants to try again if they have a stronger case to support their claim. A similar invitation was extended in Ohio Tax Cases ^^'^ considered in the preceding instalment of this discussion.^'^ The case which gives sufl&cient warrant for the belief that there is a Hmit to the power of the state to impose specific taxes on local business, when that business is united with an interstate business, is General Railway Signal Co. v. Virginia ^^^ decided in April a year ago. This case involved a writ of error from the Virginia decision considered in a previous section of this study .^^^ The prophecy was there ventured that the Virginia decision would be reversed by the Supreme Court. This prophecy was founded on the assump- tion that the Virginia excise on foreign corporations was measured by total capital stock with no maximum limitation, since nothing to the contrary appeared in the opinion of the Virginia court. The assumption, however, was contrary to fact, as corporations having a capital of $90,000,000 or more paid only $5,000. More- over, the amounts exacted of smaller corporations did not vary precisely with capital stock, except when the capital was between $50,000 and $1,000,000. One thousand dollars was demanded from every corporation with a capital between one and ten million dollars, $1,250 from those whose capital is between ten and twenty million, with corresponding increases of $250 for those in the higher classes. Thus the statute was like the hypothetical one suggested previously in this study ,^^^ in which, instead of a single maximum, there was a series of maxima graded roughly according to capital stock. In discussing such a statute, it was argued that if Massa- chusetts made its exaction proper by a $2,000 maximum which was of value only to corporations with a capital in excess of $10,000,000, "o 232 U. S. 576, 34 Sup. Ct. Rep. 372 (1914). i** 32 Harv. L. Rev. 405-07. "» 246 U. S. soo, 38 Sup. Ct. Rep. 360 (1918). "» General Railway Signal Co. v. Commonwealth, 118 Va. 301, 87 S. E. 598 (1916), 31 Harv. L. Rev. 756-60.