Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 48).pdf/833

 other legislation in so far as in conflict with the provisions (§ 14). Clearly’ a share of stock in a foreign corporation, owned by a resident, and the corporate excess of a domestic corporation were thus rendered subject to the mill tax, and exempted from other taxes. Thus a resident of this state owning shares of stock in a state bank in Minnesota er in any other foreign corporation, was taxable on such stock at the rate of three mills on the dollar of its valuation, whereas formerly he was taxable on account of such stock according to the rate of levy in the taxing district of his domicile. So, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, through the definition employed in the Money and Credits Act, considered in its relation to the existing legislation, money and credits included “bonds and stocks” owned by individuals; also the corporate excess of domestic corporations; and after its passage it is certain that no resident of the state could have been lawfully taxed on stock owned in foreign corporations, including banks, at any greater rate than three mills on the dollar, whereas formerly he was taxable according to the local levy.

The sections of the statute (§§ 2110 and 2115), one of which provides a method for arriving at the corporate excess of corporations generally, and the other for computing the value of bank stock, do not, in our opinion, have any bearing upon the question of the taxability or exemption of the stocks referred to in either section under a general description of stocks. These sections never existed for the purpose of differentiating between the kinds of stocks, and subjecting each to a different share of the tax burden. They merely subserved official convenience in valuing and equalizing properties of the same general species to the end that each might in the end be subjected to its full, uniform legal burden as required by the Constitution before its amendment. They were aids to a complete and full assessment; not vehicles for discrimination. Hence, since the term “bonds and stocks” as used in the Money and Credits Act refers just as appropriately to the valuation reached by applying one section as it does to that reached by applying the other, we can see no basis for saying that it included one and excluded the other.

An examination of the legislation passed concurrently with this 1917 act does not disclose an intention to exclude bank stock from its operation. Chap. 61 of the Laws, of 1917, approved on the same day as the Money and Credits Act, amended the statute governing the assessment