Salt Lake Union Stock Yards v. State Tax Commission

71 P.2d 538, 93 Utah 166, 1937 Utah LEXIS 45
CourtUtah Supreme Court
DecidedSeptember 14, 1937
DocketNo. 5876.
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 71 P.2d 538 (Salt Lake Union Stock Yards v. State Tax Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Utah Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Salt Lake Union Stock Yards v. State Tax Commission, 71 P.2d 538, 93 Utah 166, 1937 Utah LEXIS 45 (Utah 1937).

Opinion

FOLLAND, Chief Justice.

In many respects the facts in this case are the same as in the case of Union Stock Yards v. State Tax Commission 93 Utah 174, 71 P. (2d) 542, decided herewith. This plaintiff is located at Salt Lake City and performs the same sort of service for interstate carriers in unloading, feeding, watering, resting, and reloading livestock as does the Union Stock Yards. So far as the tax is imposed on provender furnished by it to livestock in interstate transportation, the case is controlled by the decision in the Union Stock Yards Case.

*168 This plaintiff, however, also furnishes the same sort of service and feed to livestock unloaded and fed for purpose of slaughter within a few days thereafter at a local packing plant. The transaction is not in interstate commerce. Does the statute impose the tax on these transactions in local commerce? Under the exemption contained in section 2(f), ch. 63, Laws Utah 1933, it is provided:

“(f) Each purchase of tangible personal property or service or product made by a person engaged in the business of manufacturing, compounding for sale, profit or use, any article, substance, commodity or service, for use in such business shall be deemed a wholesale sale and shall be exempt from taxation under this act.”

At the Second Special Session of the Legislature of 1933, the above section was amended by chapter 20 (page 36), as follows:

“ (f) Each purchase of tangible personal property or product made by a person engaged in the business of manufacturing, compounding for sale, profit or use, any article, substance or commodity which enters into and becomes an ingredient or component pa/rt of the tangible personal property or product which he manufactures or compounds or the container, label, or the shipping case thereof shall be deemed a wholesale sale and shall be exempt from taxation under this act.
“Each purchase of service as defined in Section U(b) of this act by a person engaged in compounding and selling a service which is subject to tax under Section U(b) of this act and actually used in compounding such taxable service shall be deemed a wholesale sale and shall be exempt from taxation under this act.” (New matter in italics.)

The tax imposed in both cases was under each of these sections, the larger volume of business, however, being under the section as amended. In 1935 this section was again amended by adding thereto:

“and for the purposes of this act, poultry, dairy and other livestock feed, and the components thereof and all seeds and/or seedlings, are deemed to become component parts of the eggs, milk, meat and other livestock products, plants and plant products, produced for resale; and each purchase of such feed or seed shall be deemed a wholesale sale *169 and shall be exempt from taxation under this act.” Section 2 (f), ch. 91 (page 183), Laws Utah 1935.

After the amendment of 1935, no sales tax was imposed upon or attempted to be collected from plaintiff or others similarly situated. Plaintiff contends the statute meant the same from the beginning so far as exempting it from the tax is concerned and that the amendment of 1935 was not for the purpose of changing the meaning of the original act, but merely for the purpose of clarification or defining what was meant by the original section.

Section 2 of the first enactment merely exempted as a wholesale sale tangible personal property sold to persons engaged in the business of manufacturing or combining for sale, profit, or use, any article for use in such business. The purpose and effect of the first amendment is quite obvious. Under the original act all the purchases of the manufacturer,, if for use in his business, were exempt from payment of the sales tax. Purchases of articles which were used or consumed and which did not go into the articles manufactured were not taxable. This was not in harmony with the sales tax theory that while the tax should not be exacted more than once, it should be paid at least once; hence the amendment, which exempted from payment of the tax any article, substance, or commodity which enters into and becomes an ingredient or component part of the product manufactured or compounded. Later it was undoubtedly brought to the attention of the Legislature that the State Tax Commission was insisting on the collection of the tax on sales of feed to persons engaged in the poultry, dairy, and livestock business, and that by natural processes such food when fed to the poultry and livestock became component parts of the eggs, milk, and meat which where later sold at retail. The amendment was then made that for the purpose of the act, poultry, dairy, and other livestock feed and the components thereof are deemed to become component parts of the eggs, milk, and other livestock products produced for sale and deemed wholesale sales and therefore exempt.

*170 We cannot believe that all that is now found in section 2 (f) was in the minds of the legislators and intended to be expressed by the first section 2(f) found in chapter 63, Laws Utah 1933. We readily concede, as contended by plaintiff, that the rule that it will be presumed the Legislature in adopting an amendment intended to make some change in the existing law (59 C. J. 1097) is subject to exceptions, and that an amendment to a statute is not necessarily an admission by the Legislature that the original statute did not cover the case and that an amendment may be made merely to express more clearly the original intention of the Legislature. School Dist. No. 12 of Pondera County v. Pondera County, 89 Mont. 342, 297 P. 498. However, it does not follow that the exception to the rule must necessarily be applied or that it is at all applicable to the statute before us. We are required to examine the legislative language to determine the scope and intent of the original and first amended acts. We are unable to conclude that the legislative intent as expressed in the original act was and continued to be that dairymen, poultrymen, and live-stockmen should be exempt from payment of the tax on purchases made by them for use in their businesses of feed for their poultry or animals, because the feed became “manufactured or combined” into eggs, milk, or meat. It would have been quite easy for the Legislature to have used words to make its purpose effective had it so intended.

The original exemption applied only to persons engaged in the business of manufacturing or compounding for sale, profit, or use, any article, etc. These words cannot by any stretch of the imagination be said to cover the business of farming, dairying, or stock raising, particularly in a state such as this where, by common usage, each of these words has a rather definite meaning. Plaintiff is not in the business of either compounding or manufacturing. The first amendment is easily understood. It did not enlarge the classes to whom the exemption applied to include the business of farming, stock raising, dairying, or poultry *171

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Bluebook (online)
71 P.2d 538, 93 Utah 166, 1937 Utah LEXIS 45, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/salt-lake-union-stock-yards-v-state-tax-commission-utah-1937.