Welch v. Henry

305 U.S. 134, 59 S. Ct. 121, 83 L. Ed. 87, 1938 U.S. LEXIS 1115

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: December 19, 1938
• Docket: 13
• Status: Published

Opinions

Mr. Justice Stone

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This appeal presents the question whether the Act of the Wisconsin Legislature of March 27, 1935, which imposed a tax on corporate dividends received by appellant in 1933 at rates different from those applicable in that year to other types of income and without deductions which were allowed in computing the tax on other income, infringes the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The statute of Wisconsin in force in 1933 and since imposes a tax on net income at graduated rates. Wisconsin Stat. 1933, c. 71. Appellant, a resident of Wisconsin, received in 1933 gross income of $13,383.26, of which $12,156.10 was dividends received from corporations whose “principal business” was “attributable to Wisconsin” within the meaning of the taxing statute. By § 71.04 (4), Wisconsin Stat. 1933,¹ such dividends were deductible from gross income in computing net taxable income, together with other items, including taxes, interest paid, business expenses, losses from the sale of securities, and donations, aggregating, in the case of appellant, $11,-161.97, so that he had no taxable net income for the year 1933.

Petitioner’s income tax return was due and filed March 15, 1934. A year later c. 15 of the Laws of Wisconsin for 1935, effective March 27, 1935, laid new taxes for the years 1933 and 1934 upon various taxable subjects. Section 6, with which we are alone concerned, imposed a graduated tax, with no deduction except the sum of $750, on all dividends received in 1933 which, when received, were deductible from gross income under § 71.04(4). The statute declared that the levy was an emergency tax to provide revenue for relief purposes and directed that the proceeds should be paid into the state treasury to be used for' “unemployment relief purposes.” Appellant paid the tax, amounting to $545.71, under protest, on May 13, 1935, and brought the present suit to compel its restitution as exacted in violation of the state constitution and the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. From the judgment of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin sustaining the tax, 226 Wis. 595; 277 N. W. 183, the case comes here on appeal. § 237 of the Judicial Code, 28 U. S. C. § 344.

First. Appellant assails the statute as a denial of equal protection because the dividends which it selected for taxation as a special class were subjected ratably to a tax burden different from that borne by other types of income for the same year by reason of the fact that the dividends were taxed at a different rate from that applied to other income and were given the benefit of but a single deduction of $750, while recipients of other types of income in that year were permitted to deduct specified items of interest, taxes, business losses and donations. It is not contended that the receipt of dividends from corporations is not subject to tax, or that apart from the retroactive application of the tax they could not be included in gross income for the purpose of arriving at net taxable income, but it is insisted that disparities in the tax burdens which may result from the different rates and deductions infringe the constitutional immunity.

Wisconsin income tax legislation has from the beginning treated dividends received from corporations deriving a substantial part of their income from business carried on within the State, on which the corporations have paid a tax to the State, as a distinct class of income for tax purposes. At first complete tax immunity was granted to them. § 1, c. 658, Laws of Wisconsin, 1911. Later the immunity was allowed ratably in the same proportion that the income of the corporation had been subjected to state income tax. § 1, c. 318, Laws of Wisconsin, 1923. And, finally, by amendment adopted in 1927² and in force in 1933 complete immunity of dividends from income tax was allowed if 50% or more of the total net income of the corporation paying them was included in the computation of the Wisconsin tax on corporate income.³

When in 1935 the State was confronted with the necessity of raising revenue to meet the demand for unemployment relief, and of distributing the cost among its taxpayers, the legislature found one class of untaxed income, dividends received from a specified category of corporations. It also could have concluded that a substantial part of this income had borne no tax burden at its source in the earnings of the corporations, since, by § 71.02 (3) (d), corporations are not required to pay a tax on that part of their income allocable to business carried on or property located without the State.

' We think that the selection of such income for taxation at rates and with deductions not shown to be unrelated to an equitable distribution of the tax burden is not a denial of the equal protection commanded by the Fourteenth Amendment. It cannot be doubted that the receipt of dividends from a corporation is an event which may constitutionally be taxed either with or without deductions, Lynch v. Hornby, 247 U. S. 339; see Helvering v. Independent Life Ins. Co., 292 U. S. 371, 381, even though the corporate income which is their source has also been taxed. See Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 U. S. 129, 136; Klein v. Board of Tax Supervisors, 282 U. S. 19, 23; Colgate v. Harvey, 296 U. S. 404, 420. The fact that the dividends of corporations which have to some extent borne the burden of state taxation constitute a distinct class for purposes of tax exemption, Colgate v. Harvey, supra; compare Travellers’ Insurance Co. v. Connecticut, 185 U. S. 364, 367; Kidd v. Alabama, 188 U. S. 730; Darnell v. Indiana, 226 U. S. 390, 398, and that in consequence such dividends have borne no tax burden, is equally a basis for their selection for taxation. Watson v. State Comptroller, 254 U. S. 122, 124, 125; Klein v. Board of Tax Supervisors, supra. Any classification of taxation is permissible which has reasonable relation to a legitimate end of governmental action. Taxation is but the means by which government distributes the burdens of its cost among those who enjoy its benefits. And the distribution of a tax burden by placing it in part on a special class which by reason of the taxing policy of the State has escaped all tax during the taxable period is not a denial of equal protection. See Watson v. Comptroller, supra, 125. Nor is the tax any more a denial of equal protection because retroactive. If the 1933 dividends differed sufficiently from other classes of income to admit of the taxation, in that year, of one without the other, lapse of time did not remove that difference so as to compel equality of treatment when the income was taxed at a later date. Selection then of the dividends for the new taxation can hardly be thought to be hostile or invidious when the basis of selection is the fact that the taxed income is of the class which has borne no tax burden. The equal protection clause does not preclude the legislature from changing its mind in making an otherwise permissible choice of subjects of taxation. The very fact that the dividends were relieved of tax, when the .need for revenue was less, is basis for the legislative judgment that they should bear some of the added burden when the need is greater.

Numerous retroactive revisions of the federal and Wisconsin revenue laws, presently to be discussed, have imposed taxes on subjects previously untaxed and shifted the burden of old taxes by changes in rates, exemptions and deductions. It has never been thought that such changes involve a denial of. equal protection if the new taxes could have been included in the earlier act when adopted. If some retroactive alteration in the scheme of a tax act is permissible, as is conceded, it seems plain that validity, so far as equal protection is concerned, must be determined, as in the case of any other tax, by ascertaining whether the thing taxed falls within a distinct class which may rationally be treated differently from other classes. If such changes are forbidden in the name of equal protection, legislatures in laying new taxes would be left powerless to rectify to any extent a previous distribution of tax burdens which experience had shown to be inequitable, even though constitutional.

The bare fact that the present tax is imposed at different rates and with different deductions from those applied to other types of income does not establish unconstitutionality. It is a commonplace that the equal .protection clause does not require a State to maintain rigid rules of equal taxation, to resort to close distinctions, or to maintain a precise scientific uniformity. Possible differences in tax burdens, not shown to be substantial, or which are based on discrimination not shown to be arbitrary or capricious, do not fall within the constitutional prohibition. Lawrence v. State Tax Comm’n, 286 U. S. 276, 284, 285, and cases cited.

Just what the differences are in the tax burdens cast upon the two types of income by the divergence in rates and deductions applied to them does not appear. The burden placed on dividends by the taxing act might have been greater if they had been included in gross income and taxed on the same basis as other income since, in that case, the resulting increase in net income would be taxed at the rates applicable to the higher brackets. When the challenged statute was enacted there were available to the legislature the returns for the taxable year showing the different classes of income, the application to them of the existing law, and the effect of existing rates and deductions. There were also data to be derived from the corporation tax returns showing what part of the exempted dividends had their source in corporate income which had been taxed to the corporation and what part was attributable to corporate income not similarly taxed. The legislature was free to take into account all these factors in prescribing rates and deductions to be applied to the newly taxed dividends so as to arrive at an equitable distribution of the added tax burden. In the absence of any facts tending to show that the taxing act, in its purpose or effect, is a hostile or oppressive discrimination against the recipients of dividends who have been hitherto fortunate enough to escape all taxation we cannot say the taxing statute denies equal protection.

Second. The objection chiefly urged to the taxing statute is that it is a denial of due process of law because in 1935 it imposed a tax on income received in 1933. But a tax is not necessarily unconstitutional because retroactive. Milliken v. United States, 283 U. S. 15, 21; and cases cited. Taxation is neither a penalty imposed on the taxpayer nor a liability which he assumes by contract. It is but a way of apportioning the cost of government among those who in some measure are privileged to enjoy its benefits and must bear its burdens. Since no citizen enjoys immunity from that burden, its retroactive imposition does not necessarily infringe due process, and to challenge the present tax it is not enough to point out that the taxable event, the receipt of income, antedated the statute.

In the cases in which this Court has held invalid the taxation of gifts made and completely vested before the enactment of the taxing statute, decision was rested on the ground that the nature or amount of the tax could not reasonably have been anticipated by the taxpayer at the time of the particular voluntary act which the statute later made the taxable event. Nichols v. Coolidge, 274 U. S. 531, 542; Untermeyer v. Anderson, 276 U. S. 440, 445 (citing Blodgett v. Holden, 275 U. S. 142, 147); Coolidge v. Long, 282 U. S. 582. Since, in each of these cases, the donor might freely have chosen to give or not to give, the taxation, after the choice was made, of a gift which he might well have refrained from making had he anticipated the tax, was thought to be so arbitrary and oppressive as to be a denial of due process. But there are other forms of'taxation whose retroactive imposition cannot be said to be similarly offensive, because their incidence is,not on the voluntary act of the taxpayer. And even a retroactive gift tax has been held valid where the donor was forewarned by the statute books of the possibility of such a levy, Milliken v. United States, supra. In each case it is necessary to consider the nature of the tax and the circumstances in which it is laid before it can be said that its retroactive application is so harsh and oppressive as to transgress the constitutional limitation.

Property taxes and benefit assessments of real estate, retroactively applied, are not open to the objection successfully urged in the gift cases. See Wagner v. Baltimore, 239 U. S. 207; Seattle v. Kelleher, 195 U. S. 351; compare Citizens National Bank v. Kentucky, 217 U. S. 443, 454; Billings v. United States, 232 U. S. 261, 282. Similarly, a tax on the receipt of income is not comparable to a gift tax. We can not assume that stockholders would refuse to receive corporate dividends even if they knew that their receipt would later be subjected to a new tax or to the increase of an old one. The objection to the present tax is of a different character and is addressed only to the particular inconvenience of the taxpayer in being called upon, after the customary time for levy and payment of the tax has passed, to bear a governmental burden of which it is said he had no warning and which he did not anticipate.

Assuming that a tax may attempt to reach events so far in the past as to render that objection valid, we think that no such case is presented here. For more than seventy-five years it has been the familiar legislative practice of Congress in the enactment of revenue laws to tax retroactively income or profits received during the year of the session in which the taxing statute is enacted, and in some instances during the year of the preceding session. See Untermeyer v. Anderson, supra, footnote 1. These statutes not only increased the tax burden by laying new taxes and increasing the rates of old ones or both, but they redistributed retroactively the tax burdens imposed by preexisting laws. This was notably the case with the “Revenue Act of 1918,” enacted February 24, 1919, 40 Stat. 1057, and made applicable to the calendar year 1918, which cut down exemptions and deductions, increased, in varying degrees, income, excess profits and capital stock taxes,, altered the basis of surtaxes, and increased in progressive ratio the rates applicable to the higher brackets. Similarly the special munition manufacturer’s tax, imposed on profits derived from sales of munitions, Act of September 8, 1916, c. 463, 39 Stat. 756, 780, was applied to the twelve months ending December 31, 1916. Cf. Carbon Steel Co. v. Lewellyn, 251 U. S. 501; United States v. Anderson, 269 U. S. 422, 435. The contention that the retroactive application of the Revenue Acts is a denial of the due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment has been uniformly rejected. Stockdale v. Insurance Companies, 20 Wall. 323, 331; Railroad Co. v. Rose, 95 U. S. 78, 80; Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U. S. 107; Billings v. United States, 232 U. S. 261, 282; Brushaber v. Union Pacific R. Co., 240 U. S. 1, 20; Lynch v. Hornby, 247 U. S. 339, 343; LaBelle Iron Works v. United States, 256 U. S. 377. The like practice of the legislature of Wisconsin has been approved by its courts.⁴

The equitable distribution of the costs of government through the medium of an income tax is a delicate and difficult task. In its performance experience has shown the importance of reasonable opportunity for the legislative body, in the revision of tax laws, to distribute increased costs of government among its taxpayers in the light of present need for revenue and with knowledge of the sources and amounts of the various classes of taxable income during the taxable period preceding revision. Without that opportunity accommodation of the legislative purpose to the need may be seriously obstructed if not defeated. We cannot say that the due process which the Constitution exacts denies that opportunity to legislatures; that it withholds from them, more than in the case of a prospective tax, authority to distribute the increased tax burden in the light of experience and in conformity with accepted notions of the requirements of equal protection; or that in view of well established legislative practice, both state and national, taxpayers can justly assert surprise or complain of arbitrary action in the retroactive apportionment of tax burdens to income at the first opportunity after knowledge of the nature and amount of the income is available. And we think that the “recent transactions” to which this Court has declared a tax law may be retroactively applied, Cooper v. United States, 280 U. S. 409, 411, must be taken to include the receipt of income during the year of the legislative session preceding that of its enactment.

The Joint Resolution of Congress of July 4, 1864, No. 77, 13 Stat. 417, imposed an additional tax on incomes earned during the calendar year 1863, this tax being imposed after the taxes for the year had been paid. In Stockdale v. Insurance Companies, supra, 331, Mr. Justice Miller said of it: “The right of Congress to have imposed this tax by a new statute, although the measure of it'was governed by the income of the past year, cannot be doubted. ... no one doubted the validity of the tax or attempted to resist it.” The Act of February 24, 1919, c. 18, Tit. 2, 40 Stat. 1057, 1058-1088, which taxed incomes for the calendar year 1918, was applied without question as to its constitutionality in United States v. Robbins, 269 U. S. 315, and in other cases.

In the present case the returns of income received in 1933 were filed and became available in March, 1934. Wisconsin Stat. 1933, § 71.09 (4). The next succeeding session of the legislature at which tax legislation could be considered was in 1935, when the challenged statute was passed. By § 11, Art. IV; § 4, Art. V, of the Wisconsin constitution, and § 13.02 Wisconsin Statutes, 1935, regular sessions of the legislature are held in each odd-numbered year. Special sessions of the legislature may be held on call of the governor, at which no business can be transacted “except as shall be necessary to accomplish the special purposes for which it was convened.” A special session was called by the governor in 1934, but for purposes unrelated to taxation. Proclamations of the Governor of Wisconsin December 2, 28, 1933, January 18, 22, 30, 1934. Thus the legislature in 1935, at the first opportunity after the tax year in which the income was received, made its revision of the tax laws applicable to 1933 income, as did Congress in the Joint Resolution of July 4, 1864, commented on in Stockdale v. Insurance Companies, supra.

While the Supreme Court of Wisconsin thought that the present tax might “approach or reach the limit of permissible retroactivity,” we cannot say that it exceeds it.

Affirmed.

1 Sec. 71.04(4) permits the deduction from gross income of dividends received from corporations whose principal business is attributable to Wisconsin; “. . . any corporation shall be considered as having its principal business attributable to Wisconsin if fifty per cent or more of the entire net income or loss of such corporation . . . (for the year preceding the payment of such dividends) was used in computing the average taxable income provided by chapter 71. . .

2 c. 539, § 4, Laws of Wisconsin of 1927.

3 See Note 1, supra.

4 Income Tax Cases (1912), 148 Wis. 456, 514; 134 N. W. 673; 135 N. W. 164; State ex rel. Globe Tubes Co. v. Lyons (1924), 183 Wis. 107, 124; 197 N. W. 578; Cliffs Chemical Co. v. Wisconsin Tax Comm’n (1927), 193 Wis. 295, 302; 214 N. W. 447; West v. Tax Comm’n (1932), 207 Wis. 557, 562; 242 N. W. 165; Van Dyke v. Tax Comm’n (1935), 217 Wis. 528; 295 N. W. 700.