Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Co. v. Philadelphia

Citations

• 190 U.S. 160

Syllabus

<p>The following propositions .as to the taxation by States and their municipalities of corporations engaged in carrying on interstate commerce have been settled:</p> <p>1. The Constitution of the United States having given to Congress the power to regulate commerce, not only with foreign nations, but among the several States, that power is necessarily exclusive whenever the subjects are national in tlieir character, or admit only of one uniform system or plan of regulation. Bobbins v. Shelby Taxing District, 120 U. S. 489, 492.</p> <p>2. No State can compel a party, individual or corporation, to pay for the privilege of engaging in interstate commerce.</p> <p>3. This immunity does not prevent a State from imposing ordinary property taxes upon property having a situs within its territory and employed in interstate commerce.</p> <p>4. The franchise of a corporation, although that franchise is the business of interstate commerce, is, as a part of its property, subject to state taxation, providing at least the franchise is not derived from the United States.</p> <p>6. No corporation, even though engaged in interstate commerce, can appropriate to its own use property public or private, without liability to a charge therefor.</p> <p>Where telegraph companies, engaged in interstate commerce, carry on'their business so as to justify police supervision, the municipality is not obliged to furnish such supervision for nothing, but it may, in addition to ordinary property taxation, subject the corporations to reasonable charges for the expense thereof.</p> <p>The reasonableness of such charges will depend upon all the circumstances involved in the particular case, and, if- in a case tried before a jury the evidence in regard thereto is not such as to exclude every conclusion except one, the question of reasonableness should be submitted to the jury.</p>