United States v. County of Fresno

429 U.S. 452, 97 S. Ct. 699, 50 L. Ed. 2d 683, 1977 U.S. LEXIS 10

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: January 25, 1977
• Docket: 75-1262
• Status: Published

Opinions

Mr. Justice White

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The issue in this case is whether, consistent with the Federal Government’s immunity from state taxation inherent in the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, see M‘Culloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316 (1819), the State of California may tax federal employees on their possessory interests in housing owned and supplied to them by the Federal Government as part of their compensation. We hold that it may.

I

The individual appellants in this case are employees of the Forest Service, a branch of the United States Department of Agriculture responsible for administering the national forests. These appellants work in the Sierra, Sequoia, and Stanislaus National Forests which are located in Fresno and Tuolumne Counties in California. During the year 1967 each appellant lived with his family in a house which was built and owned by the Forest Service in one of these national forests. Appellants were required by the Forest Service to live in these houses¹ so that they would be nearer to the place where they performed their duties and so that they would be better able to perform those duties. Structurally, the houses were very similar to residential houses of the same size available in the private sector. The Forest Service viewed the occupancy of these houses as partial compensation for the services of its employees, and made a deduction from the salary of the employee for each two-week pay period in which the employee occupied such a house. The Forest Service fixed the amount of the deduction by estimating the fair rental value of a similar house in the private sector and then discounting that figure to take account of the distance between the Forest Service house and the nearest established community and the absence, if any, of any customary amenities in or near the house.² Adjustment was also made for the fact that the Forest Service reserved the right to remove employees from their houses at any time, to enter the houses with or without notice for inspection purposes, and to use part or all of the houses for official purposes in an emergency.

Pursuant to 16 U. S. C. § 480, the States retain civil and criminal jurisdiction over the national forests notwithstanding the fact that the national forests are owned by the Federal Government. Under the California Revenue and Taxation Code, §§ 104, 107 (West 1970), and § 21 (b) of Title 18 of the California Administrative Code (1971), counties in California are authorized to impose an annual use or property tax on possessory interests in improvements on tax-exempt land.³ The Counties of Fresno and Tuolumne imposed such a tax on the appellants — Forest Service employees who live in the federally owned houses in the national forests located in those counties. In computing the value of the possessory interests on which the tax is imposed, the counties used the annual estimated fair rental value of the houses, discounted to take into account essentially the same factors considered by the Forest Service in computing the amount that it deducted from the salaries of employees who used the houses.⁴

Appellants paid the taxes under protest and they, together with the United States, sued for a refund in California courts in Fresno and Tuolumne Counties. They claimed, inter alia, that the tax interfered with a federal function — i. e., the running of the Forest Service — that it discriminated against employees of the Federal Government, and that it was therefore forbidden by the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution. E. g., M‘Culloch v. Maryland, supra. The trial courts each sustained appellants' claims, holding, inter alia, that appellants had no taxable possessory interest under state law. The California Court of Appeal, Fifth Appellate District, reversed, 50 Cal. App. 3d 633, 123 Cal. Rptr. 548 (1975) (County of Fresno case, followed in County of Tuolumne case (unreported)). It held that each appellant had a possessory interest in the houses owned by the Forest Service that was subject to taxation under state law. The court then held that the tax on such possessory interests is not a tax on the Federal Government, on Government property, or on a “federal function.” Rather, it is a tax imposed on “the private citizen, and it is the private citizen’s usufructuary interest in the government land and improvements alone that is being taxed. (City of Detroit v. Murray Corp., 355 U. S. 489 . . . ; United States v. Township of Muskegon, 355 U. S. 484 . . . ; United States v. City of Detroit, 355 U. S. 466 .. . .)” Id., at 640, 123 Cal. Rptr., at 552. Consequently, the court held, the tax is not barred by the Supremacy Clause of the Federal Constitution. The California Court of Appeal also rejected appellants’ contention that the tax operates to discriminate against the Federal Government and its employees. The Supreme Court of California denied review. We noted probable jurisdiction to review the decision of the California Court of Appeal, 425 U. S. 970 (1976).

Appellants argue that the tax is “a levy upon the activities of the United States” because the occupancy of the houses by the Forest Service employees was “for the sole purpose of discharging their governmental function of running the national forests.” Brief for Appellants 11. Consequently, the Government argues, the tax is forbidden by the doctrine announced in M‘Culloch v. Maryland, that under the Supremacy Clause of the Federal Constitution the States may not tax the properties, functions, or instrumentalities of the Federal Government. We disagree with the Government, and affirm the judgment below.

II

The Government relies principally on the landmark case of M‘Culloch v. Maryland. There the State of Maryland imposed a tax on notes issued by “any Bank ... established without authority from the State.” '⁵ The only such bank in Maryland was the Bank of the United States, created and incorporated by Act of Congress in order to carry out Congress’ enumerated powers. No similar tax was imposed on the issuance of notes by any other bank in Maryland. The Court held the tax to violate that part of the Federal Constitution which declares that the laws of the United States are the “supreme law of the land.” An Act of Congress had created the bank in order to carry out functions of the National Government enumerated in the United States Constitution. The Court noted that the power to tax the bank “by the States may be exercised so as to destroy it,” 4 Wheat., at 427, and consequently that the power to tax, if admitted, could be exercised so as effectively to repeal the Act of Congress which created the bank. If the State’s power to tax the bank were recognized in principle, the Court doubted 'the ability of federal courts to review each exercise of such power to determine whether the tax would or would not destroy a federal function. Finally, the Court rejected the State’s argument that the power to tax involves the power to destroy only where the taxing power is abused, and that the Court should simply trust the States not to abuse their power to tax a federal function just as it must trust a State not to abuse its power to tax its own citizens. The Court rejected the argument because the political check against abuse of the power to tax a State’s constituents is absent when the State taxes only a federal function.⁶ A State’s constituents can be rebed on to vote out of office any legislature that imposes an abusively high tax on them. They cannot be relied upon to be similarly motivated when the tax is instead solely on a federal function.

The Court was careful to limit the reach of its decision. It stated that its opinion does not

_ “extend to a tax . . . imposed on the interest which the citizens of Maryland may hold in this institution [the bank], in common with other property of the same description throughout the State.” Id., at 436. (Emphasis added.)

Since M‘Culloch, this Court has adhered to the rule that States may not impose taxes directly on the Federal Government, nor may they impose taxes the legal incidence of which falls on the Federal Government.⁷ The decisions of this Court since M‘Culloch have been less uniform on the question whether taxes, the economic but not the legal incidence of which falls in part or in full on the Federal Government, are invalid.

For many years the Court read the decision in M‘Culloch as forbidding taxes on those who had contractual relationships with the Federal Government or with its instrumentalities whenever the <■ feet of the tax was or might be to increase the cost to the Federal Government of performing its functions.⁸ In later years, however, the Court departed from this interpretation of M'Culloch. In James v. Dravo Contracting Co., 302 U. S. 134 (1937), a contractor sought immunity from a state occupation tax measured by the gross receipts, insofar as those receipts had been received under a contract with the Federal Government. The Court declared the tax valid even if “the gross receipts tax may increase the cost to the Government” under the contract. Id., at 160. So long as the tax is not directly laid on the Federal Government, it is valid if nondiscriminatory, id., at 150, or until Congress declares otherwise. Id., at 161. Similarly, in Graves v. New York ex rel. O’Keefe, 306 U. S. 466 (1939), the Court sustained a nondiscriminatory tax on the income of a federal employee, thereby overruling Dobbins v. Commissioners of Erie County, 16 Pet. 435 (1842).⁹ See also Alabama v. King & Boozer, 314 U. S. 1 (1941), overruling Panhandle Oil Co. v. Mississippi ex rel. Knox, 277 U. S. 218 (1928).

Finally, and for the purposes of this case dispositively, in City of Detroit v. Murray Corp., 356 U. S. 489 (1958), United States v. City of Detroit, 355 U. S. 466 (1958), and United States v. Township of Muskegon, 355 U. S. 484 (1958), this Court sustained state use taxes on the use by private companies of machinery and other property owned by the United States and leased to them .for use in their businesses — even though in two of these cases the companies had cost-plus contracts with the Government requiring the Government to reimburse them for state taxes paid by them. These cases make clear that a State may, in effect, raise revenues on the basis of property owned by the United States as long as that property is being used by a private citizen or corporation and so long as it is the possession or use by the private citizen that is being taxed. See also Esso Standard Oil Co. v. Evans, 345 U. S. 495 (1953).

The rule to be derived from the Court’s more recent decisions, then, is that the economic burden on a federal function of a state tax imposed on those who deal with the Federal Government does not render the tax unconstitutional so long as the tax is imposed equally on the other similarly situated constituents of the State.¹⁰ This rule returns to the original intent of M‘Culloch v. Maryland. The political check against abuse of the taxing power found lacking in M'Culloch, where the tax was imposed solely on the Bank of the United States, is present where the State imposes a nondiscriminatory tax only on its constituents or their artificially owned entities;¹¹ and M'Culloch foresaw the unfairness in forcing a State to exempt private individuals with beneficial interests in federal property from taxes imposed on similar interests held by others in private property. Accordingly, M‘Culloch expressly excluded from its rule a tax on “the interest which the citizens of Maryland may hold [in a federal instrumentality] in common with other property of the same description throughout the State.” 4 Wheat., at 436.

Ill

Applying the rule set forth above, decision of this case is relatively simple. The “legal incidence” of the tax involved in this case falls neither on the Federal Government nor on federal property. The tax is imposed solely on private citizens who work for the Federal Government. The tax threatens to interfere with federal laws relating to the functions of the Forest Service only insofar as it may impose an economic burden on the Forest Service — causing it to reimburse its employees for the taxes legally owed by them or, failing reimbursement, removing an advantage otherwise enjoyed by the Federal Government in the employment market.¹² There is no other respect in which the tax involved in this case threatens to obstruct or burden a federal function. The tax can be invalidated, then, only if it discriminates against the Forest Service or other federal employees, which it does not do.¹³

Although .the tax is imposed by the appellee counties on renters of real property only if the owner is exempt from taxation — and consequently is not imposed on the vast majority of renters of real property in California — the tax is not for that reason discriminatory. In this respect this case is governed by United States v. City of Detroit, 355 U. S. 466 (1958). There the city of Detroit imposed a use tax on those who used tax-exempt property owned by the United States. The tax was measured by the value of the property. With respect to nonexempt property, a similar tax was imposed on the owner and none on the user. In answering an argument that the tax discriminated against those dealing with the Federal Government, the Court said:

“As suggested before the legislature apparently was trying to equate the tax burden imposed on private enterprise using exempt property with that carried by similar businesses using taxed property. Those using exempt property are required to pay no greater tax than that placed on private owners or passed on by them to their business lessees.” Id., at 473-474. (Emphasis added.)

Similarly, here the State of California imposes a property tax on owners of nonexempt property which is “passed on by them to their . . . lessees.” Consequently, the appellants who rent from the Forest Service are no worse off under California tax laws than those who work for private employers and rent houses in the private sector.

The Government argues nonetheless that the appellants are required to occupy the houses owned by the Forest Service not for their own personal benefit but for the sole benefit of the Forest Service and that “[t]here is accordingly no constitutionally permissible way to isolate any 'personal residence’ portion of these possessory interests that could be deemed to be unrelated to the official duties of these Forest Service employees.” Brief for United States 18.¹⁴ The argument is at odds with the Government’s own concessions during this lawsuit, with its treatment of its employees apart from this lawsuit, and with common sense. The Government’s complaint in this case alleges that the occupancy of the Forest Service houses constitutes part of appellants’ “compensation” for services performed- — -thus conceding that the occupancy is of personal benefit to the employee. At oral argument the Government conceded that a state income tax could be imposed on the employees for the value of the occupancy — thus conceding that its value to the employee is capable of being severed from its value to the Forest' Service and of being accurately measured. The Forest Service itself purports to measure the personal benefit of the occupancy to the employee and collects rent in such an amount through deductions from the employee’s paycheck. Since virtually everyone in this country pays for housing for himself or herself and family, common sense compels the conclusion that the occupancy of a house provided by an employer for an employee’s family is of personal financial benefit to the employee — relieving him of the expense of paying for housing elsewhere.¹⁵ The disadvantages attendant on living in Forest Service housing may affect the amount of the value of the house to the employee, but it is unquestionably of some value to him. Here both appellees have sought to take account of these disadvantages and to tax the employees only on the portion of the total value of the houses which may be properly attributed to their possessory interest. In this respect, the taxes are valid even under United States v. Allegheny County, 322 U. S. 174 (1944), see n. 10, supra, so heavily relied on by the Government. There the Court invalidated a tax on use by a private corporation of Government-owned property because “the State has made no effort to segregate [the corporation’s] interest and tax it.” Id., at 187. The Court stated, however:

“Actual possession and custody of Government property nearly always are in someone who is not himself the Government but acts in its behalf and for its purposes. . . . His personal advantages from the relationship by way of salary, profit or beneficial personal use of the property may be taxed as we have held.” Id., at 187-188. (Emphasis added.)

This statement ripened into holdings in United States v. City of Detroit, supra, at 472, and United States v. Township of Muskegon, 355 U. S. 484 (1958). The only difference between Township of Muskegon — where Government-owned property was being used by a private corporation in complying with a Government contract — and this case is that there the property was being used by business for “profit” and here the property is being put to “beneficial personal use.” Under the rule of United States v. Allegheny County and United States v. City of Detroit, this difference is inconsequential. The two types of interests are equally taxable.

In conclusion, as the Court said in City of Detroit v. Murray Corp., 355 U. S., at 495:

“There was no discrimination against the Federal Government, its property or those with whom it does business. There was no crippling obstruction of any of the Government’s functions, no sinister effort to hamstring its power, not even the slightest interference with its property. Cf. M’Culloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316. In such circumstances the Congress is the proper agency, as we pointed,out in United States v. City of Detroit, to make the difficult policy decisions o necessarily involved in determining whether and to what extent private parties who do business with the Government should be given immunity from states taxes.”

Affirmed.

1 Some of the appellants were not required but simply permitted to live in houses owned by the Forest Service, in the sense that these particular appellants might have been able to live in a privately owned house outside the forest if they had so elected. However, the Forest Service required that some employee occupy each house owned by the Forest Service, and if no employee had volunteered, some employee, perhaps including some of these appellants, would have been required to live there. In light of our disposition of this case, the distinction between employees required to live in Forest Service housing and those permitted to live there is unimportant and we will not refer to it again.

2 Examples of the amenities considered are, according to the testimony of a Forest Service official:

“Paved streets, street lighting at least at intersections, sidewalks, lawns, trees and landscaping, general attractiveness of the neighborhood, community sanitation services, reliability and adequacy of water safe for household use, reliability of [sic] adequacy of electrical service, reliability and adequacy of telephone service, reliability and adequacy of fuel for heating, hot water and cooking, police protection, fire protection, unusual design features of a dwelling, absence of disturbing noises or offensive odors and standards of maintenance.” App. 32.

3 Section 107, Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code (West 1970), provides:

■‘“Possessory interests’ means the following:

“(a) Possession of, claim to, or right to the possession of land or improvements, except when, coupled with ownership of the land or improvements in the same person.”

Title 18 Cal. Adm. Code § 21 (b) (1971) provides:

“ ‘Taxable possessory interest’ means a possessory interest in nontaxable publicly owned real property, as such property is defined in section 104 of the Revenue and Taxation Code . . . .”

Section 104, Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code (West 1970), provides:

“ ‘Real estate’ or ‘real property’ includes:

“(a) The possession of, claim to, ownership of, or right to the possession of land.”

All parties agree that the national forests owned by the Federal Government are tax-exempt land by reason of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, e. g., United States v. Allegheny County, 322 U. S. 174 (1944), and that no tax may be imposed either on the land itself or on the United States.

With respect to non-tax-exempt land, California imposes a property tax on the owner. No tax is imposed directly on a renter of non-tax-exempt land. However, the tax on the owner is presumably reflected in the rent and the renter may thus pay the tax indirectly.

4 In computing the value of appellants’ possessory interests on which the tax was imposed, Fresno County used the value of one year of occupancy. Tuolumne County used the present discounted value of five years’ occupancy — the length of time which it estimated the average Forest Service employee remained in a Forest Service house.

5 The tax was in the form of a forced purchase from a state official of stamped paper on which such notes were required to be printed. The tax could be avoided by an annual lump-sum payment to the state official of $15,000.

6 The Court stated:

'‘[Normally in] imposing a tax the legislature acts upon its constituents. This is in general a sufficient security against erroneous and oppressive taxation.

“The people of a State, therefore, give to their government a right of taxing themselves and their property, . . . resting confidently on the interest of the legislator, and on the influence of the constituents over their representative, to guard them against its abuse.” 4 Wheat., at 428. “. . . When they tax the chartered institutions of the States, they tax their constituents; and these taxes must be uniform. But, when a State taxes the operations of the government of the United States, it acts upon institutions created, not by their own constituents, but by people over whom they claim no control.” Id., at 435.

Accordingly, the Court concluded:

“The result is a conviction that the States have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control, the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers vested in the general government. This is, we think, the unavoidable consequence of that supremacy which the constitution has declared.” Id., at 436.

7 Thus the Court invalidated a state law which required a seller of liquor to United States post exchanges to collect a markup — the practical equivalent of a tax — from the post exchange and to remit it to the State Tax Commission. United States v. Mississippi Tax Comm’n, 421 U. S. 599 (1975). There, although the tax was nominally collected from the seller, the legal incidence of the tax was said to fall on the United States because state law required it to be charged to and collected from the United States by the seller. See First Agricultural Nat. Bank v. Tax Comm’n, 392 U. S. 339 (1968). Kern-Limerick, Inc. v. Scurlock, 347 U. S. 110 (1954), heavily relied on by appellants, also stands only for the proposition that the State may not impose a tax the legal incidence of which falls on the Federal Government. Id., at 122. There the State imposed a sales tax on purchasers. Kern-Limerick, Inc., had a cost-plus contract with the Department of the Navy which provided that all purchases made in furtherance of the contract were made by the Department of the Navy, with Kern-Limerick acting only as its agent. The Court held that the question of who was the purchaser for state-tax purposes was a federal question, and it held the Department of the Navy to be the purchaser and the tax to be thus unenforceable. See also Federal Land Bank v. Bismarck Lumber Co., 314 U. S. 95 (1941); Van Brocklin v. Tennessee, 117 U. S. 151 (1886).

8 E. g., Dobbins v. Commissioners of Erie County, 16 Pet. 435 (1842) (holding unconstitutional a state tax on the income of a federal employee); Panhandle Oil Co. v. Mississippi ex rel. Knox, 277 U. S. 218 (1928) (holding unconstitutional a sales tax imposed on one who made sales to the Federal Government); Gillespie v. Oklahoma, 257 U. S. 501 (1922) (holding unconstitutional a state income tax as it applied to income generated from property leased from the Federal Government). See also United States v. Rickert, 188 U. S. 432 (1903).

9 In Graves, the Court said:

“The theory, which once won a qualified approval, that a tax on income is legally or economically a tax on its source, is no longer tenable.” 306 U. S., at 480.

“[T]he only possible basis for implying a constitutional immunity from state income tax of the salary of an employee of the national government or of a governmental agency is that the economic burden of the tax is in some way passed on so as to impose a burden on the national government tantamount to an interference by one government with the other in the performance of its functions.” Id., at 481. (Emphasis added.)

The Court rejected this economic burden as a justification for immunizing the employee from income taxation:

“[T]he purpose of the immunity was not to confer benefits on the employees by relieving them from contributing their share of the financial support of the other government, whose benefits they enjoy, or to give an advantage to a government by enabling it to engage employees at salaries lower than those paid for like services by other employers, public or private, but to prevent undue interference with the one government by imposing on it the tax burdens of the other.

“[A] non-discriminatory tax laid on the income of all members of the community could not be assumed to obstruct the function which [a government entity] had undertaken to perform, or to cast an economic burden upon them, more than does the general taxation of property and income which, to some extent, incapable of measurement by economists, may tend to raise the price level of labor and materials.” Id., at 483-484.

“So much of the burden of a non-discriminatory general tax upon the incomes of employees of a government, state or national, as may be passed on economically to that government, through the effect of the tax on the price level of labor or materials, is but the normal incident of the organization within the same territory of two governments, each possessing the taxing power.” Id., at 487.

10 The single arguable departure from this principle since 1937 is United States v. Allegheny County, 322 U. S. 174 (1944). There the Mesta Machine Company had a contract with the Federal Government to produce field guns for the War Department during 1941. Some of the machinery with which Mesta produced the guns was owned by the United States and was in the possession of Mesta. There were limitations on Mesta’s right to use this machinery: Mesta’s “leasehold interest [in the machines] is subject to some qualification of the right to use the property except for gun manufacture . . . and is perhaps burdened by other contractual conditions.” Id., at 186-187. Pennsylvania, the State in which Mesta’s factory was located, imposed a property tax on Mesta’s land and machinery attached thereto, including the machinery owned by the United States. This Court ruled the tax invalid, stating: “Mesta has some legal and beneficial interest in this property. It is a bailee for mutual benefit. Whether such a right of possession and use in view of all the circumstances could be taxed by appropriate proceedings we do not decide. . . . [T]he state has made no effort to segregate Mesta’s interest [in the machinery] and tax it. The full value of the property including the whole ownership interest, as well as whatever value proper appraisal might attribute to the leasehold, was included in Mesta’s assessment.” Ibid.

Insofar as United States v. Allegheny County, supra, holds that a tax measured by the value of Government-owned property may never be imposed on a private party who is using it, that decision has been overruled by United States v. City of Detroit, 355 U. S. 466 (1958), and its companion cases. See id., at 495 (Frankfurter, J., concurring and dissenting). Insofar as it stands for the proposition that Government property used by a private citizen may not be taxed at its full value where contractual restrictions on its use for the Government’s benefit render the property less valuable to the user, the case has no application here. Appellee counties have sought to tax only the individual appellants’ interests in the Forest Service houses and have reduced their assessments to take account of the limitations on the use of the houses imposed by the Government.

11 A tax on the income of federal employees, or a tax on the possessory interest of federal employees in Government houses, if imposed only on them, could be escalated by a State so as to destroy the federal function performed by them either by making the Federal Government unable to hire anyone or by causing the Federal Government to pay prohibitively high salaries. This danger would never arise, however, if the tax is also imposed on the income and property interests of all other residents and voters of the State.

12 The Federal Government would otherwise have had the power— enjoyed by no other employer — of giving its employees housing on which no property tax is paid by them either directly or indirectly as rent paid to a landlord who himself paid a property tax.

13 The Government has expressly abandoned its claim, made below, that the tax treats federal employees who live in federally owned houses differently from state employees who lived in state-owned houses.

14 If it were factually accurate that the use of Forest Service housing is of no personal benefit to appellants, the tax would chscrhninate against those who work for the Federal Government since California imposes no other tax on its citizens with respect to property in which those citizens have no beneficial personal or business interest. The tax would thus run afoul at least of the Supremacy Clause. M‘Culloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316 (1819); United States v. City of Detroit, 355 U. S., at 473.

15 An attempt by California to impose a use tax on a Forest Service employee for his fire ax — which he used only in performing his job — or on' a fire tower inhabited by such employee in the daytime and solely in order to- perform his job would present a different question. The employee does not put either the ax or the tower to “‘beneficial personal use,’ ” and it is not part of his “ ‘profit’ ” or his “ ‘salary.’ ” United States v. City of Detroit, supra, at 471. See n. 14, supra.