Roger Dean Enterprises v. STATE, ETC.

387 So. 2d 358
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedJuly 24, 1980
Docket55971
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 387 So. 2d 358 (Roger Dean Enterprises v. STATE, ETC.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Roger Dean Enterprises v. STATE, ETC., 387 So. 2d 358 (Fla. 1980).

Opinion

387 So.2d 358 (1980)

ROGER DEAN ENTERPRISES, INC., Petitioner,
v.
STATE of Florida, DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE, Respondent.

No. 55971.

Supreme Court of Florida.

July 24, 1980.

*359 David S. Meisel of Rogers & Meisel, Palm Beach, for petitioner.

Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., and E. Wilson Crump, II, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, for respondent.

*360 ADKINS, Justice.

By petition for writ of certiorari we are asked to review a decision of the Fourth District Court of Appeal (Roger Dean Enterprises v. The Department of Revenue of the State of Florida, 371 So.2d 101 (Fla.4th DCA 1978)), which involved questions of great public interest. The district court of appeal has certified to us the following two questions:

1. Is the gain from an out-of-state sale of stock held by a foreign corporation doing business in Florida taxable under the Florida corporate income tax code?
2. Is it constitutional for the Florida corporate income tax to be imposed on a gain from properties sold prior to the amendment of the Florida constitution permitting such tax when said gain is reported on the installment basis in tax years subsequent to the passage of the amendment?

We answer both questions in the affirmative.

The petitioner, Roger Dean Enterprises, Inc., is referred to hereinafter as the taxpayer and the Department of Revenue of the State of Florida is referred to hereinafter as the department.

The taxpayer, a West Virginia corporation, operated an automobile dealership in Huntington, West Virginia, until June 1, 1962, when it exchanged the assets of its automobile dealership for fifty percent of the capital stock of Dutch Miller Chevrolet, Inc., a West Virginia corporation organized to succeed to the automobile dealership formerly operated by the taxpayer. Prior to this, in 1961, the taxpayer had acquired 100 percent of the capital stock in Palm Beach Motors (the name of which was changed on August 10, 1961, to Roger Dean Chevrolet, Inc.). Roger Dean Chevrolet, Inc., is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the taxpayer which operates on property owned by the taxpayer.

The years involved herein are the fiscal years of the taxpayer ending December 31, 1972, and 1973, during which years the taxpayer's principal income (except for the gain involved herein), consisted of rents received from Roger Dean Chevrolet, Inc. Taxpayer and its subsidiary filed consolidated returns for the years involved herein. During the fiscal year ending December 31, 1972, taxpayer sold its stock in Dutch Miller Chevrolet, Inc., to an unrelated third party for a gain determined by the department to be in the amount of $349,217.00, which, although the sale took place out of the state of Florida, the department has determined to be taxable under the Florida Income Tax Code (chapter 220, Florida Statutes).

In the fiscal years ending December 31, 1972, and 1973, taxpayer included in Florida taxable income the amounts of $76.00 and $6,245.00, respectively, for the sale of property on April 23, 1971, such gain being reported for federal income tax purposes on the installment method under section 453 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954.

Roger H. Dean, individually, or by attribution during the years involved herein, was the owner of 100 percent of the stock of taxpayer and 75 percent of the stock of Florida Chrysler Plymouth, Inc. The remaining 25 percent of Florida Chrysler Plymouth, Inc., was owned by another person. The department disallowed the $5,000 exemption to the taxpayer in computing its Florida corporate income tax for each of the years in question on the theory that the two corporations were members of a controlled group of corporations, as defined in section 1563 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954.

By letter of April 13, 1976, the department advised the taxpayer of its proposed deficiencies for the fiscal years ending December 31, 1972, and 1973, in the net respective amounts of $19,086.25 and $1,086.79. Taxpayer duly filed its protest in response thereto and the department rejected taxpayer's position. Taxpayer timely requested an administrative hearing, which was held. The hearing officer issued a recommended order upholding the assessments of tax. The recommended order was submitted to the department and was approved.

*361 The returns of the taxpayer indicated that the taxpayer had no property, payroll, or sales of tangible personal property, or realty ascribable to any jurisdiction other than the state of Florida. Apparently based on these facts, the hearing officer computed in his recommended order that the taxpayer was commercially domiciled in Florida during the tax years in question.

By petition for writ of certiorari the taxpayer sought review of the final agency action, but was denied all relief. These proceedings resulted.

There is a difference between two concepts which are applied in many states that have corporate income taxes. These concepts are "allocation" and "apportionment." Allocation is a process whereby certain types of income, often called "non-business" income, generally in the nature of passive or investment income, are assigned in their entirety to a particular jurisdiction for tax purposes, usually the state of commercial domicile, theoretically, to the exclusion of all other jurisdictions. In the second concept, apportionment, the taxpayer's normal or business income is mathematically divided among the various jurisdictions in which it does business to determine the measure of local tax. Apportionment is generally accomplished by means of a three-factor formula, utilizing property, payroll, and sales in the taxing jurisdiction over property, payroll, and sales in all jurisdictions. Although some case law and other authorities have erroneously used the term allocation when actually referring to apportionment, technically the two are entirely separate, distinct, and different concepts. Of course, the taxpayer concedes that the apportionment concept is applied in Florida.

The legislature has rejected entirely the concept of allocation in favor of "full apportionment," that is, including all income of the taxpayer in the tax base subject to apportionment regardless of the sources from which that income was derived. Shortly after the adoption of the code this was explained as follows:

First, the legislature considered whether Florida should differ from the majority of states which tax corporate income by requiring for Florida a full apportionment of the taxable income reported for federal income tax purposes. This treatment of multistate taxpayers differs from the more traditional process of "allocating" i.e. assigning in full — to one jurisdiction some types of passive income, and "apportioning" i.e. assigning proportional shares of income among all the states having jurisdiction over the taxpayer only the balance. ____ Recognizing that Florida is not the "commercial domicile" for a significant number of multistate enterprises, and being aware that the allocation — apportionment format is financially advantageous only to the few commercial domicile states, the Florida Legislature elected to follow the more modern trend to full apportionment.

England, Corporate Income Taxation in Florida: Background, Scope, and Analysis in Florida Corporate Income Taxation, 4, 14 (Fla.St.Univ.L.Rev., April 1972).

It is well settled that a fairly apportioned state tax may be imposed upon the income of a business operating in interstate commerce. In Mobil Oil Corporation v. Commissioner of Taxes of Vermont,

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