Citation Numbers: 182 Ala. 475, 62 So. 77
Judges: Dowdell, Graefenried, Mayfield, Sayre, Somerville
Filed Date: 2/14/1913
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 7/27/2022
To quote from the brief of counsel for appellant: “The question at issue is whether the Legislature has the right, under the provisions of the Constitution of this state, to fix by enactment the
(1) The power of taxation is an incident of sovereignty and is possessed by the government without being expressly conferred by the people.
(2) The power is purely legislative.
(3) So long as no constitutional limitations are exceeded, the Legislature is of supreme authority, and the courts, as well as all others, must obey. — Schultes v. Eberly, 82 Ala. 242, 243, 2 South. 345; Hare v. Kennerly, 83 Ala. 608, 3 South. 683; Phoenix Carpet Co. v. State, 118 Ala. 143, 151, 22 South. 627, 72 Am. St. Rep. 143; 1 Cooley on Constitutional Limitations, pp. 7, 9, 49.
If the legislative provision in question is unconstitutional, it must be because it is repugnant to one or more of the following sections of the state Constitution:
Section 211: “All .taxes levied on property in this state shall be assessed in exact proportion to the value of such property, but no tax shall be assessed upon any debt for rent or hire of real or personal property, while owned by the landlord or hirer during the current year of such rental or hire, if such real or personal property be assessed at its full value.”
. Section 214: “The Legislature shall not have the power to levy in any one year a greater rate of taxation than sixty-five one-hundredths of one per centum on the value of the taxable property within this state.”
Section 181 — (prescribing who shall be qualified to register as electors, and including) : “The owner in good faith in his own right, or the husband of any woman who is the owner in good faith, in her own right, * * * of real estate situate in this state, assessed for taxation at the value of three hundred dollars or more, or * * *” (repeating the same conditions as to personal property).
Section 211 of the present Constitution had its origin in a provision first found in the Constitution of 1819: “All lands liable to taxation in this state, shall be taxed in proportion to their value.” This rule, preserved in all succeeding Constitutions, was extended to personal property and incorporated in the Constitution of 1868 in the following language: “All taxes, levied on property in this state, shall be assessed in exact proportion to the value of such property.” And so it has been preserved unchanged in the two succeeding Constitutions of 1875 and 1901. The purpose and scope of this constitutional limitation upon the taxing power has been frequently considered by this court, and the substance of our decisions is that it was designed to secure uniformity and equality by the enforcement of an ad valorem system of taxation and to prohibit arbi
It is equally clear, however, that section 214, which limits the rate of taxation to .65 of 1 per centum on the value of taxable property, does, by necessary implication, forbid a legislative basis of assessment in excess of 100 per cent, of the value of the property, for otherwise the express limitation on the rate might be made wholly ineffectual by the simple legislative device of an excessive valuation of the property.
The Supreme Court of Illinois has given very thorough consideration to this subject. Under a constitutional provision that all persons should pay a tax in proportion to the value of their property, the Legisla
Similar legislation under similar provisions of the Constitutions of Tennessee, Nebraska, and West Virginia has been held to be valid. — Railroad & Telephone
Our conclusion is that, so far as sections 211 and 214 of the Constitution are concerned, the Legislature ¡may prescribe as a basis for the levy of the general state tax of .65 of 1 per centum any percentage of the actual value of taxable property which it may deem expedient, not in excess of 100 per cent, thereof.
Section 260 of the present Constitution, as quoted above, is an imperative mandate to the Legislature to levy for the support of the public schools of the state “a special annual tax of 30 cents on each $100 of taxable property,” and expressly reduces the total maximum rate of .65 of 1 per centum, as fixed by section 214, to .35 of 1 per centum for all other public purposes. This constitutional mandate has been executed by the enactment of subdivision “a” of section 2082, Code of 1907, which reads: “There is hereby levied for the purposes named, upon the property hereinafter named, in lieu of all taxes heretofore levied, annual taxes as follows, to wit: (a) For the maintenance of the public schools of the state, thirty cents on each hundred dollars of the assessed valuation of taxable property; (b) - * *; (c) * *
We agree with counsel for the state that the phrase “taxable property,” as repeatedly used in the several sections of the Constitution and of the Code relative to taxation, means, and can only mean, property which the Legislature has not constitutionally exempted from taxation. It is clearly so used in section 36A of the revenue act itself, and hence it would be a palpable contra
For the state it is argued, on the other hand, that the Constitution does not merely set aside a fixed proportion of the general revenue for the support of the public schools, but in fact provides for a distinct and independent tax in that behalf; that it was intended to 'fix a limitation downward as well as upward; and that the theory of a limitation downward is wholly inconsistent with the retention of the legislative power to prescribe as a basis for assessment any scheme of valuation other than the actual value of the property, for it is urged, the power to limit the assessment to 60 per centum of the actual value necessarily assumes the power to limit it also to 50, 40, 20, or even 1 per centum, and thus to actually nullify the levy completely for all practical purposes. It must be conceded that these arguments are both weighty and forcible; so much so, indeed, that they might well perplex the wisdom and divide the counsels of the bench in the ascertainment of the general constitutional intent, as manifested by the several provisions germane to the present inquiry.
We have given very full and earnest consideration to the merits of the controversy as above impartially outlined, and we are not convinced that any of the constitutional provisions above quoted are so clearly repugnant to the legislative power exercised in the enactment of section 36A of the revenue act as to authorize the sentence of judicial nullification here invoked by the state. We will state some of our reasons for this conclusion :
(2) Knowing these things, as we must assume they did, they must have understood and appreciated the gross inequalities resulting from the practices in this regard prevailing throughout the state; inequalities not merely between different localities, but between taxpayers in the same locality. And we may further assume that they understood, what we believe must be apparent to every student of the subject, that the only rational and practicable method of equalizing taxation between localities and between individuals would be by the general approximation of some attainable level of valuations. And of course they knew that the very key-note sounding through the tax provisions of the Constitution is equality, as nearly as it is practically attainable, and security against excessive taxation.
(3) Under these conditions, when they prescribed the levy of the special school tax they could not have anticipated that it would yield anything like 30 cents on every $100 of taxable property, and must have known that it would in fact yield scarcely more than half such an amount. The Legislature had never shown any disposition to reduce tax revenues by minimizing assessment valuations, but quite the contrary, and that was an evil (if it may be so termed) neither existing in fact
(4) Although the phraseology used in fixing the school tax rate in section 260 is different from that use in fixing the maximum general rate in section 214, we see in .the change no more than the adoption of a simpler and more direct method of expressing the rate intended to be fixed. If it had been intended to do more than fix the rate, viz., to perpetuate its levy upon the hitherto unattained basis of assessment at actual values, and to abrogate and destroy the undoubted power of the Legislature to equalize taxation upon any lower level, the expression of such a purpose would have been natural, -and its accomplishment easy, by the interjection of a simple phrase. It may be argued that, if it was intended that the fixed rate should be levied upon property only as it might be required to be assessed by law, it would have been equally easy and natural to have expressed that qualification. The difference, however, lies in the nature of the qualifications in question; and, while it would be natural to express a designed limitation upon sovereign power, it is not at all needful to express an affirmance of the power itself when incidentally concerned.
(5) While the assessment of property is an indispensable element to the fruitage of any levy upon a per centum rate, and the basis for assesssment valuations will in a measure control its yield of revenue, there was with respect to the school tax levy, as we have already stated, no practical possibility of its defeat or substantial impairment by any legislative reduction of such
(6) Had it been intended to limit and control the Legislature in respect to the mode of assessing values, the natural, and certainly the most proper*, place to express that purpose would have been in section 211 or section 214. The failure to do so would seem to indicate the total inadvertence of the Constitution makers to such a proposition. Certainly they • must have designedly omitted to use the language customarily adopted in statutes and constitutions for such a pux*pose, as witness our own former statutes, and the Constitutions of Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, and South Carolina, as quoted in 1 Cooley on Taxation (2d Ed.)
It remains now to consider the second clause of section 211 and the property qualification clause of section 181, which have been referred to as germane to our inquiry.
Nor do we find in the language of section 181 any purpose to restrict legislative power with respect to assessments. The suffrage qualification there prescribed is the ownership of property “assessed for taxation at the value of three hundred dollars or more,” and there is a manifest disregard for an actual value test. This provision was adopted, we must assume, with a full understanding of the low scale of valuations prevalent throughout the. state, and in plain view of the evident fact that electors who owned |300 worth of property could establish their qualifications only by assessing it at twice or thrice the proportionate values given in by or imposed upon their more opulent neighbors. The inequality is not aggravated by the legal adoption of an assessment valuation in excess of that in actual use. Moreover, there can be no doubt but that the 60 per cent, basis for assessment is intended to be a restriction upon assessment officers, and not upon property owners who may insist upon assessing their property at its actual value. But, whether those officers permit an assessment on actual valuation or make it on the
Recurring to the general merits of the question under consideration, we suggest a line of reasoning which is, we believe, of controlling force. It is thoroughly well settled that the Legislature has the power to exempt from taxation any kinds or classes of property at its discretion, if not constitutionally restrained therefrom. • — 37 Cyc. 738-740. Our Constitution imposes no restraint in this particular, except as to uniformity and equality. — Moog v. Randolph, 77 Ala. 597; Phoenix Carpet Co. v. State, 118 Ala. 143, 22 South. 627, 72 Am. St. Rep. 143; Mayor of Mobile v. Stonewall Ins. Co., 53 Ala. 570. In fact wherever the Constitution provides for the levy of a tax, it is expressly limited to “taxable property,” which means, as we have already pointed out, property not lawfully exempted from taxation. This power is unreservedly conceded by counsel for the state. It includes, of course, the power to select for taxation only real estate, with a resulting exemption of personalty, and vice versa. — -37 Cyc. 740, and cases cited. And, if either class may be exempted, it cannot be denied that both may be exempted. And, if both are exempted, what becomes of the general tax, and what becomes of the special school tax? And, it may be pertinently asked, what becomes of the state? This demonstrates to a certainty that, so far as mere poicer is concerned, the Constitution has left in the Legislature the absolute power to nullify all taxation and to destroy all tax revenues. That such a power is left untouched and unrestrained is clearly and radically inconsistent with the theory that any of the quoted sections of the Constitution aimed at the abrogation of legislative freedom in dealing with the mere matter of valuation, for that the framers of the Constitution
We are supported in our conclusion by the general principles of constitutional construction heretofore declared by this court. Buies of statutory construction are of limited application in the construction of the Constitution. The safe rule of constitutional construction is to regard not so much the form or manner of expression as the nature and objects of its provisions, and the end to be accomplished, giving its words their just and legitimate meaning. — Carroll v. State, 58 Ala. 396.
A new constitutional provision adopted by a people already having well-defined institutions and systems of law must not be construed as intending to abolish the former system, except in so far as it is in manifest repugnance to the new Constitution; and, in determining the real scope and meaning of the new provision, it must be read in the light of the former law and the existing system. — Taylor v. Woods, 52 Ala. 474. New provisions, having their origin in larger experience, introduced into an amended or revised Constitution, are to be construed and allowed such operation as will secure the purposes for which they were introduced; and these purposes are to be ascertained from a just consideration of the causes in which they originate. — • Mayor of Mobile v. Stonewall Ins. Co., 53 Ala. 570, 577.
We think we have said enough to demonstrate that the alleged excess of legislative power in the enactment of the law in question is at least too doubtful to justify us in pronouncing it unconstitutional, for, as said by Chief Justice Sharswood, “to doubt is to be resolved in favor of the constitutionality of the act.” — Commonwealth v. Butler, 99 Pa. 535.
Let the judgment be affirmed.
Affirmed.