Fuller Brush Co. v. United States

262 F. Supp. 989, 18 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 6328, 1966 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9876
CourtDistrict Court, D. Connecticut
DecidedJune 20, 1966
DocketCiv. No. 9925
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 262 F. Supp. 989 (Fuller Brush Co. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fuller Brush Co. v. United States, 262 F. Supp. 989, 18 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 6328, 1966 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9876 (D. Conn. 1966).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

BLUMENFELD, District Judge.

This is a suit for refund of taxes and interest paid to the United States by the plaintiff in response to an assessment against it of retailers' excise tax deficiencies and interest for the first quarter of 1957, the fourth quarter of 1959, and all four quarters of 1961. The total assessment, made on November 16, 1962, for the entire period from the first quarter of 1957 through the fourth quarter of 1961 was $466,866.85. The government denies any obligation to refund the taxes paid and counterclaims for the amount of the assessment unpaid, plus interest.

Jurisdiction is based on 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a) (1).

The plaintiff, The Fuller Brush Company, (hereinafter “Fuller”), is a corporation incorporated under the laws of the State of Connecticut, having its principal place of business in the State of Connecticut. Fuller is a wholesaler of cosmetics, toilet preparations and household articles which are purchased from it by independent contractor-dealers, (hereinafter “dealers”), who sell such products at retail. During all times material to this action (1957 through 1961) there were approximately 6000 dealers selling Fuller products door-to-door throughout the United States.

The assessment is based on sales of only one article, Fuller’s Lavender Spray Sachet, (hereinafter “LSS”), and its tax-ability is claimed under 26 U.S.C. § 4021 which imposes a retail excise tax on the sale of certain articles.

Before reaching the question whether LSS is a taxable article within the meaning of the statute, it is necessary first to consider whether Fuller is liable for the taxes on sales made by its dealers. With each of its 6000 dealers widely known and identified as a “Fuller Brush Man” it would not have seemed incongruous had the Commissioner of Internal Revenue relied upon the presumption of correctness of a determination by him that sales of Fuller’s LSS made by them were sales by the defendant through agents. However, the government’s claim is more modest. The legal relationship between Fuller and the actual sellers at retail is irrelevant. The government has stipulated with the plain[991]*991tiff that, “since Fuller did not sell toilet preparations at retail, the dealers, who did sell at retail, would be liable for the excise tax and its payment over to the defendant.” Fuller’s liability, if any, to the defendant for the payment of any retailers’ excise tax must be based on a waiver agreement it made with the government (JT Exhibit 1), otherwise plaintiff may not be held liable for the payment of such taxes in those years, 1957, 1958 and 1959. The meat of the agreement is all in the first sentence.1

Contending that the waiver agreement does not apply to sales by its dealers of LSS purchased from it, Fuller argues that, since its whole purpose in seeking permission to pay the tax for its dealers was generated in 1948 when it made an agreement with Daggett & Ramsdell, (hereinafter “D & R”), to act as its distributor for a rather broad line of cosmetics manufactured by that company, its waiver applies only to such products. Apart from the D & R products, the Fuller line of admitted toilet preparations purchased from others included only a hand lotion throughout the period and a bath oil which was sold only during the last quarter of 1959. All of the reasons which Fuller testified it had in mind 2 when it sought permission to pay the tax in behalf of its dealers apply with equal force to its distribution of all taxable items whether bought from D & R or others.

In arguing for such an overriding effect upon the waiver agreement with the government, Fuller also stresses the uniqueness to it of the provision it made with D & R committing Fuller to distribute the D & R products at fixed prices under fair trade agreements. Whatever may have caused Fuller to set in motion the wheels that led to the waiver agreement, nothing in the language of the waiver agreement remotely suggests that the dealers’ sales of taxable articles at retail upon which the company agreed to pay the tax were limited in any way by the source of their manufacture. To the contrary, the agreement relates only to the next step in the linear sequence of distribution — sale by the dealer.

Fuller also resorts to the “fair trade” commitment with D & R to support its claim that the waiver agreement applies only to D & R products. Emphasizing its commitment to “fair trade” D & R products as constituting a special situation in its contracts with its dealers, which permitted them to fix their own prices on other Fuller items, the plaintiff reads the waiver agreement’s permission to pay taxes on sales at “retail list prices; established by the Company” (emphasis, added) in the light of its dealers’ contract and argues that, since Fuller did not establish retail prices for its dealers on regular Fuller items, it could not, under the terms of the permission and waiver, collect the tax from its dealers on such [992]*992sales. This view of the waiver agreement in juxtaposition to its own internal methods of operation is too self-centered. It is clear that the only purpose in the waiver agreement of “established” list prices is so that the taxes may readily, in aid of administrative convenience, be “computed upon the bona fide retail list prices established by the Company.” (Emphasis added). Certainly “fair-trading” agreements were not required in order to establish a list price for that purpose. The “suggested” list price for LSS in the Fuller Brush Magazine 3 was sufficient to satisfy the requirement of the waiver agreement.

Furthermore, there was never any misunderstanding about the need for a company method of establishing a price for the purpose of computing the tax, as distinguished from the price at which the article must be sold at retail. When Fuller’s house counsel initiated the negotiations with the Treasury Department which led up to the waiver agreement, he wrote to it on November 12, 1947:

“In the administration of some of the state sales tax laws, the state tax departments have authorized us as wholesalers to make a report of the estimated retail sales made by the dealers to whom we wholesale our merchandise. We have only the wholesale prices. We obtain an estimated retail figure by marking up the wholesale figures fifty percent. We make a report and pay the sales tax to the state. We bill each retailer for the amount of the sales tax using the estimated retail price. In this manner, the state gets the sales tax promptly and with a minimum of effort. They get it whether or not the goods purchased by the retailer are sold.
“There is no such provision in the Federal Cosmetic Tax Act. However, substantially the same results could be obtained if the retailers gave us or our employee a power of attorney to file a cosmetic tax return on his behalf, and also to pay the tax. We would bill the retailer for the amount of the tax that we reported for and on his behalf and as his agent. Inasmuch as we do not know his retail prices we would have to use an arbitrary mark-up of fifty percent of the wholesale price in order to arrive at the retail price.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
262 F. Supp. 989, 18 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 6328, 1966 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9876, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fuller-brush-co-v-united-states-ctd-1966.