State Tonnage Tax Cases Cox v. Collector Trade Company

ERROR to the Supreme Court of Alabama.

These were two cases, which, though coming in different forms, involved one and the same point only; and at the bar-where the counsel directed attention to the principle involved, separated from the accidents of the case-were discussed together as presenting 'precisely the same question.' The matter was thus:

The Constitution ordains that 'no State shall without the consent of Congress lay any duty of tonnage.' With this provision in force as superior law, the State of Alabama passed on the 22d of February, 1866, a revenue law. By this law, the rate of taxation for property generally was the one-half of one per cent; but 'on all steamboats, vessels, and other water crafts plying in the navigable waters of the State,' the act levied a tax at 'the rate of $1 per ton of the registered tonnage thereof,' which it declared should 'be assessed and collected at the port where such vessels are registered, if practicable; otherwise at any other port or landing within the State where such vessel may be.'

The tax collector was directed by the act to demand, in each year, of the person in charge of the vessel, if the taxes had been paid. If a receipt for the same was not produced, he was to immediately assess the same according to tonnage, and if such tax was not paid on demand he was to seize the boat, &c., and, after notice, proceed and sell the same for payment of the tax, &c., and pay the surplus into the county treasury for the use of the owner. If the vessel could not be seized, the collector was to make the amount of the tax out of the real and personal estate of the owner, &c.

Under this act, one Lott, tax collector of the State of Alabama, demanded of Cox, the owner of the Dorrance, a steamer of 321 tons, and valued at $5000, and of several other steamers, certain sums as taxes; and under an act of 1867, identical in language with the one of 1866, just quoted, demanded from the Trade Company of Mobile certain sums on like vessels owned by them; the tax in all the cases being proportioned to the registered tonnage of the vessel.

The steamboats, the subject of the tax, were owned exclusively by citizens of the State of Alabama, and were engaged in the navigation of the Alabama, Bigbee, and Mobile Rivers, carrying freight and passengers between Mobile and other points of said rivers, altogether within the limits of that State. These waters were navigable from the sea for vessels of 'ten and more tons burden;' and it was not denied that there were ports of delivery on them above the highest points to which these boats plied. The owners of the boats were not assessed for any other tax on them than the one here claimed. The boats were enrolled and licensed for the coasting trade. Though running, therefore, between points altogether within the limits of the State of Alabama, the boats were, as it seemed, of that sort on which Congress lays a tonnage duty.

Cox, under compulsion and protest, paid the tax demanded of him, and then brought assumpsit in one of the inferior State courts of Alabama, to get back the money. The Trade Company refused to pay, and filed a bill in a like court, to enjoin the collector from proceeding to collect. The ground of resistance to the tax in each case was this, that being laid in proportion to the tonnage of the vessel, the tax was laid in a form and manner which the State was prohibited by the already quoted section of the Constitution from adopting. The right of the State to lay a tax on vessels according to their value and as property was not denied, but on the contrary conceded. Judgment being given in each case against the validity of the tax, the matter was taken to the Supreme Court of Alabama, which decided that it was lawful. To review that judgment the case was now here.

Messrs. J. A. Campbell and P. Hamilton, for the plaintiffs in error:

The right of the State to tax the property of the citizen is admitted by us; but we assert that the tax should be upon property as property, and not because it is in the shape of vessels or boats having a greater or less capacity.

'Tonnage duties,' as defined by the learned Bouvier, are 'duties on vessels in proportion to their capacity.' Now Congress has imposed such duties from the 20th July, 1790 till the present time. The duties are imposed upon vessels plying on the navigable waters of the United States for the purpose of traffic, according to the tonnage measurement of the vessel. The manner in which the vessel shall be admeasured is prescribed, and the time and place at which the duties shall be collected are determined by law. The same officer collects these duties who collects other duties. The tax is collected yearly at the port where the vessel enters or clears for the first time.

The argument of Mr. Langdon in the Convention of 1787, 'that the regulation of tonnage was an essential part of the regulation of trade, and that the States ought to have nothing to do with it,' has been practically applied in this legislation of Congress. But the Alabama statute is similar in what it does to the enactments of the General Government. The duty is assessed in the same manner, is a yearly tax, and is made for the same cause. We insist, therefore, that it is void.

The injustice of the tax in this instance, it may be added, is striking. The value of one of these boats, the Dorrance, is $5000; her tonnage, 321 tons. At the rate of taxation established by the Alabama revenue acts for property (the half of one per cent.), the tax on this vessel would be $25; but assessed on tonnage, it is $643.25; more than twelve per cent. on the value of the property.

Mr. P. Phillips, contra:

The vessels being owned by citizens of the State, and employed exclusively in commerce within the State, are like all other property within its jurisdiction, subject to taxation. This being admitted, of what consequence can it be to the citizens of any other State, what form the State may adopt in which to impose the tax? Why should the consent of Congress be asked, to the imposition of a tonnage tax in a case, when it is admitted that the State has full power to tax. It is evident that this provision is of the category of prohibitions, in which we find that 'no preference shall be given in any regulation of commerce to the ports of one State over those of another;' and that 'vessels bound to or from one State, shall not be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another.' These, like all other constitutional provisions, extend to cases where there is a general interest or concern. They do not deal with cases where the citizens of the State are alone interested. The Constitution does not deal with words, but with substance, and is to be construed accordingly. A tax which in reality operates as a 'tonnage' duty, though not in the form of such a duty, would, when the prohibition was intended to apply, be held invalid. On the other hand, when the case is not within the intent of the prohibition, the form of the tax will be disregarded. Pilot fees in one case were levied at so much per ton, and yet this court held, that to consider this as a tonnage duty, 'would be to confound things essentially different. It is the thing, and not the name which is to be considered.' The Constitution provides that 'no State shall levy any duty on imports or exports,' yet when the question was presented to this court, as to the power of the State to levy a tax on goods imported from another State, the court did not confine itself to the mere word 'import,' but proceeded to inquire into the true meaning and design of the prohibition, and held, that the word did not include imports from another State, but was applicable alone to goods brought from a foreign country.

That the tax may operate very unequally upon different sorts of property owned by the people of Alabama, is no argument against the constitutionality of the tax, though it may be so against its policy. But the policy of any State tax is a matter for the legislature of the State alone to decide on. It will be admitted by the other side, that the same inequality might be lawfully brought about if it were done in another form.

Nor, we may reply in passing, is the inequality produced by the Alabama statute, greater than that which Congress produces by its statutes laying a tonnage tax; for an old and decayed vessel, though it may be worth but quarter as much as a well-built, new, and sound one, must pay, under the act of Congress, if the tonnage capacity of the two vessels be the same, exactly the same amount of tax.

Reply: Though the vessels in this particular case are all owned by citizens of Alabama, the statute taxing them, applies to 'all' vessels plying in the navigable waters of the State by whomsoever owned. We say that the statute is void, and not simply that this particular tax is unlawful.

Mr. Justice CLIFFORD delivered the judgment of the court, giving an opinion in each of the cases.