Trinova Corporation v. Michigan Department of Treasury/Dissent Stevens

Justice STEVENS, with whom Justice BLACKMUN joins, dissenting.

Although the parties refer to Michigan's "Single Business Tax" (SBT) as a "Value Added Tax" (VAT), that term does not appear in the text of the statute. The text of the relevant Act describes the SBT as a tax on "certain commercial, business, and financial activities." As a practical matter, Michigan's SBT is nothing more than an amalgam of three separate taxes: a tax on payroll, a tax on depreciable fixed assets, and a tax on income. Payroll and depreciation represent over 90 percent of the SBT base, and the productive activities that are measured by payroll and depreciation take place at geographic locations that are readily identifiable. Because Michigan's SBT uses an apportionment formula to tax a portion of those activities occurring outside Michigan, I depart from the Court's analysis and conclude that the state taxation scheme violates established principles of due process.

* Petitioner Trinova's executive offices and manufacturing facilities are located in Ohio. Most of its employees live and work in Ohio. In fact, significantly less than one percent of Trinova's capital assets and labor were employed in Michigan in 1980. The company operated at a substantial loss in that year. The question presented is whether the fact that 26 percent of Trinova's unprofitable sales were made to Michigan customers provides a constitutionally sufficient justification for the State to attribute to Michigan (and thus to tax) approximately nine percent of Trinova's productive activities, almost all of which actually occurred in Ohio.

In upholding the constitutionality of the SBT against a Due Process Clause challenge, the Court today concludes that even though the bulk of Trinova's property and payroll are located outside Michigan, it does not follow that the bulk of its value-adding activities are located outside Michigan and thus are not attributable to or taxable by Michigan. Rather, the Court assumes that the value added to a product, is largely contingent upon the revenue that the product generates when it is sold in the marketplace. Because the value added by Trinova's use of labor and capital in Ohio is not realized until Trinova's product is sold in Michigan and the product is given market value by consumers, the Court concludes that Michigan's sales contribute greatly to the value of Trinova's product, and thus that allowing a portion of the value added by Trinova's business activities in Ohio to be attributed to Michigan through use of an apportionment formula is justified.

The Court's assumption that value added from labor and capital is not realized until the product is sold, however, is simply wrong. Finished goods, even though stored in a warehouse and not yet sold, are more valuable than raw materials. Moreover, under the Michigan statute, the revenues generated by the sales of the finished product are reflected in the net income component of the tax base. Thus, in this case, because Trinova operated at a loss, the value added by labor and capital is reduced, rather than enhanced, by the ultimate sales made in Michigan. It necessarily follows that allowing Michigan to apportion out-of-state expenses incurred for fixed assets and labor on the basis of Michigan sales in effect allows Michigan to tax extraterritorial business activity.

Under this Court's due process jurisprudence, a State may constitutionally tax only those interstate business activities or income to which it has a rational nexus. See Container Corp. of America v. Franchise Tax Bd., 463 U.S. 159, 165-166, 103 S.Ct. 2933, 2940-2941, 77 L.Ed.2d 545 (1983). However, in the context of state income taxes on "unitary" interstate businesses, our cases allow States to deviate from the fixed rule of geographic accounting in favor of a more flexible system of formulary apportionment. In so doing, we have cautioned that "[t]he functional meaning of this requirement [of a rational nexus between the taxing State and the taxed activities] is that there be some sharing or exchange of value not capable of precise [geographic] identification or measurement . . . which renders formula apportionment a reasonable method of taxation." Id., at 166, 103 S.Ct., at 2940.

The Court today extends its analysis upholding the constitutionality of income apportionment as an exception to the general rule of geographic accounting to situations in which the original justification for the use of an imprecise apportionment formula no longer holds. Unlike the income of a unitary business, which we before have recognized may not be precisely allocated, the two principal elements of Michigan's SBT-property and payroll are subject to precise geographic identification and thus do not warrant being subject to an apportionment formula.

The Court concedes, as it must, that far less than one percent of Trinova's capital assets and labor were employed in Michigan in 1980, but rejects the logical result of such analysis by concluding that it does not necessarily follow that far less than one percent of Trinova's "value added" can be precisely identified as having been realized outside Michigan. Instead, the Court concludes that the value added by Trinova's factors of production located outside of Michigan cannot be precisely determined until the ultimate product is sold and the market value or revenue that the product commands is considered. As the Court states, "[t]he Michigan SBT . . . is not three separate and independent taxes, and Trinova cannot purport to identify the geographic source of value added by assuming that two elements can be located in a single State while the third cannot." Ante, at 375. Rather, "[i]n a unitary enterprise, compensation, depreciation, and profit are not independent variables to be adjusted without reference to each other. If Trinova had paid an additional $100 million in compensation during 1980, there is no way of knowing whether, or to what extent, value added would have increased.  In fact, value added would not have increased so long as revenues did not increase."  Ante, at 376 (emphasis added).

Driving the Court's analysis is the recognition that Trinova in 1980 netted a loss of over $42 million. This, the Court concludes, means that the ultimate value added by Trinova's use of labor and capital resources was not equivalent to its actual payroll and capital expenses. Resisting the perceived awkwardness of finding "that Trinova added value at the factory through the consumption of capital and labor, but that its products somehow lost value outside of this process," id., at 375, the Court holds that the value added by capital and labor should not be deemed to be realized and should not be geographically assigned until Trinova's product is sold, and that the measure of value added by payroll and capital expenses should be adjusted by the ultimate revenue the product generates.

The Court's assumption that value added by property and payroll is not realized and cannot be determined until the product is sold is belied by the rationale underlying the VAT. The "concept of value added . . . is derived from the most basic of economic facts-the scarcity of resources-and hence consistently measures the amount of scarce labor and capital resources used up (and not available for use elsewhere) in every economic activity." See Haughey, The Economic Logic of the Single Business Tax, 22 Wayne L.Rev. 1017, 1018 (1976). That a product is ultimately unprofitable does not diminish the amount of resources a company utilized in manufacturing the product. Nor does the value added to the economy or gross national product by the company's purchase of labor and utilization of capital diminish when the product is not sold or is sold for a net loss.

Rather, value added is fully realized at each stage of the production process-at the stages where labor services are sold and paid for by the company in the form of payroll expenses and where capital is consumed. The amount of value added at these intermediate stages of production is the price paid for the labor services and for the capital expended. See ibid. (value added may be determined by "add[ing] up all of the payments paid internally to the owners of the labor and capital used"). Regardless of the profitability (or unprofitability) of the ultimate product, value added by labor and capital is not eliminated or diminished if the ultimate product is unable to command equivalent value or revenue in the marketplace. As the Court itself concedes early in its opinion, "[e]ven if a business entity is unprofitable, under normal circumstances it adds value to its products and, as a consequence, will owe some VAT." Ante, at 364. This immunity of the VAT base from the vagaries of the marketplace is the basic justification for the SBT: "[B]ecause value added does not fluctuate as widely as net income, a VAT provides a more stable source of revenue than the corporate income tax." Ibid.

Concededly, under the Michigan statute, the task of calculating precisely Trinova's value added by its capital and labor resources without looking to its ultimate sales or profit is complicated by the unprofitability of Trinova's business during the tax year in question. Under Michigan's method for calculating the SBT base, the corporation's profit is added to the sum of labor costs and capital expenditures (consisting of depreciation and interest expenses) and represents the value added by the corporation's skill and entrepreneurial effort. Insofar as Trinova in 1980 netted a loss of over $42 million, Trinova's VAT base was actually reduced by "addition" of its profit to its labor and capital costs.

It is nevertheless clear that value added under the additive method is realized at each stage of the production process and is undiminished if the product suffers a net loss. That Michigan chooses to allow a company's VAT base to be reduced by the extent of its unprofitability does not in any way lead to the Court's conclusion that the value added by labor and capital is not realized when (and where) those resources are purchased, and that the amount of that value added to the economy is not equivalent to the price paid by the company for those resources.

Because the value added by the two principal components of Michigan's SBT-labor and capital-are fully realized and thus can be precisely quantified and geographically assigned when the actual purchase of labor services and use of capital occur, Michigan's apportionment of a company's entire payroll and capital expenses results in the unconstitutionaltax ation by Michigan of a portion of the taxpayer's extraterritorial activities. In fact, in Trinova's case, although less than one percent of Trinova's property and payroll expenses are incurred within its borders, Michigan, by applying the apportionment formula to payroll and capital, treats nine to ten percent of Trinova's labor and capital costs as if they were in-state expenses. Because such extraterritorial taxation violates basic principles of due process, I respectfully dissent.