Town of Plainfield v. Commissioner of Revenue Services

567 A.2d 379, 213 Conn. 269, 1989 Conn. LEXIS 348
CourtSupreme Court of Connecticut
DecidedDecember 19, 1989
Docket13718
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 567 A.2d 379 (Town of Plainfield v. Commissioner of Revenue Services) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Town of Plainfield v. Commissioner of Revenue Services, 567 A.2d 379, 213 Conn. 269, 1989 Conn. LEXIS 348 (Colo. 1989).

Opinion

Shea, J.

The principal issue in this appeal is whether the plaintiff town of Plainfield, when it furnished police protection pursuant to General Statutes § 7-284,1 provided a taxable service under General Statutes § 12-407 (2) (i) (E)2 and § 12-426-27 (b) (5) of the Regulations of Connecticut State Agencies.3 As a result of an audit, the defendant tax commissioner assessed sales taxes upon the amount charged by the plaintiff for rendering police protection to the Plainfield Dog Track. The plaintiff appealed to the Superior Court, which ruled that the assessment was lawful and, therefore, dismissed the appeal. We find no error.

[271]*271The trial court found the following facts. The town of Plainfield maintains a police department headed by a chief of police and operating under a board of police commissioners. The dog track regularly attracts a large number of patrons during racing performances. Pursuant to § 7-284, the police chief determined that police protection was required during these performances and, thereafter, provided the services he deemed to be necessary. The officers providing those services were assigned by means of a permanent weekly schedule, were responsible for performing the duty as assigned, worked in uniform, and were under the supervision and control of the chief during their tours of duty. The collective bargaining contract between the plaintiff and the police union provided that service at the dog track was “extra duty,” for which the officers were paid one and one-half times their regular hourly rate. The officers’ services at the track were paid for by the plaintiff, which also made the necessary deductions for income tax and social security. The track paid the plaintiff $91,000 per year for the services rendered by these officers, with no profit being realized by the plaintiff as a result of the payments.* **4

On appeal, the plaintiff claims that the trial court erred in concluding that the services rendered by the police officers were taxable because: (1) the services were of a “public” rather than a “private” nature; (2) the services were excluded from the sales tax by virtue of being rendered by “on-duty” police officers; (3) the services were excluded from the imposition of [272]*272a sales tax by virtue of being rendered as a function of an employee-employer relationship; and (4) the applicable regulation was beyond the authority conferred by the relevant statutes. We conclude, relying partly on our recent decision in Berlin v. Commissioner, 207 Conn. 289, 540 A.2d 1051 (1988), that there is no error.

I

The plaintiff first claims that its police services do not fall within the statutory confines of § 12-407 (2) (i) (E), which defines as taxable sale “the rendering of certain services for a consideration . . . [including] private investigation, protection, patrol work, watchman and armored car services.” The plaintiff maintains that, under this statute, only those activities are taxable that are performed on a “private” rather than on a “public” basis. From this premise, the plaintiff then argues that because § 7-284 “mandates” police protection at such establishments as the dog track, there can be no sales tax due for the services rendered by the plaintiff’s police officers in protecting the public.

When this argument was presented at trial, the court refused to decide whether the legislature intended to confine “protection” and “patrol work” solely to private protection and private patrol work. The court did conclude, however, that if the plaintiff had provided a public service to the dog track, “similar to normal public police services provided to residents of the Town of Plainfield, then no payment would be required of the Track just as no resident of the Town is required to pay for public police services.” The court concluded that the services rendered by the officers were “in the nature of ‘private’ and not ‘public’ services.” It declared that the “service provided is not to the public at large but to a profit-making institution.” The court relied upon the undisputed applicability of § 7-284 to the dog [273]*273track, requiring it to pay for the services it received from the police department, as an indication that these services were not “normal everyday public police services regularly rendered to Town residents.” We agree with the trial court.

Section 7-284 provides that when police protection is “necessary” at any listed event, “the amount of such protection necessary shall be determined and shall be furnished by” the chief of police. The flaw in the plaintiffs argument is that § 7-284 does not “mandate” public protection at the enumerated events. Section 7-284 represents, rather, a legislative determination that in some circumstances the security arrangements, if any, provided by the promoter of an event may not be adequate and, further, that the ultimate determination of adequacy is to be made by a police official rather than the promoter.5 With this understanding, we conclude that the police services rendered to the dog track by the plaintiffs police officers are indistinguishable from the police services that we determined, in Berlin v. Commissioner, supra, were subject to a sales tax assessment.

In Berlin, the furnishing of off-duty police officers, requested and paid for by private citizens, was held to be subject to collection of a sales tax. Here, the nature of the actual service provided by the plaintiffs police officers is identical to that provided by the officers in Berlin — protection for private citizens above and beyond that required during the normal course of the [274]*274officer’s duties. The only difference in this case is that the determination of whether those services were required at the dog track was made by a police official rather than the owners of the track.

Section 12-407 (2) (i) (E) looks to the type of service actually rendered, and not to the status of the person who decides that it should be rendered. Our conclusion that the services rendered here were private in nature and therefore taxable is reinforced further by the legislature’s specific mandate, in § 7-284, that the cost of such protective services is to be borne by the promoter rather than the town. As the trial court correctly concluded, if the services rendered pursuant to § 7-284 were truly of a “public” nature, the legislature would not have provided that the dog track must shoulder the cost of providing them. We conclude that the trial court’s resolution of this issue was not erroneous.

II

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Bluebook (online)
567 A.2d 379, 213 Conn. 269, 1989 Conn. LEXIS 348, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/town-of-plainfield-v-commissioner-of-revenue-services-conn-1989.