Falkner, Bell & Co. v. Hunt

Citations

• 16 Cal. 167
• 1860 Cal. LEXIS 199

Syllabus

<p>Taxes not justly due, and paid under protest, may be recovered back by suit against the Tax Collector.</p> <p>A mortgage is not personal property within the Bevenue Act of 1856, nor liable, as such, to taxation.</p> <p>An assessment thus : “Mortgages (Marysville) $100,000,” is insufficient under the act. The assessment does not show for what the mortgages were given, nor on what property, nor whether the debts were solvent, nor the value of the property mortgaged; and the sole fact that a mortgage is held for a given amount, does not make the mortgage subject to taxation as for so much money.</p> <p>Land mortgaged may be taxed without reference to the mortgage, and if the mortgage be to secure a debt, the debt may be taxed; if to secure a loan of money, the money may be taxed; but the act does not intend to tax the mortgage, as such, and also to tax the money loaned and secured by the mortgage, or the solvent debt it represents.</p> <p>An assessment thus : “ Personal property—mortgages (Marysville) $100,000,” is not good as an assessment of personal property, independent of the term “ mortgages,” on the ground that the act requires no description of personal property to be given, but its value only. The whole statement must be taken together, and that shows “ mortgages ” to be taxed, and they are not subject to taxation as such.</p> <p>Prima facie, a mortgage is no more taxable than a deed or any other muniment of title or mere security, and the money which it secures cannot be taxed without a more particular description than the general designation, “personal property.”</p> <p>Under this act, a lumping assessment of “personal property ” is bad. Every item of taxable property need not be listed, but the different classes named in the act should be stated—as goods, money loaned, gold dust, solvent debts.</p>